The Formula 1 race track in Monaco, Rio de Janeiro or Mount Vesuvius as an erupting volcano - all of this is recreated in the Hamburg Speicherstadt in the Miniatur Wunderland. Every year it attracts more than a million tourists from all over the world. There were many doubts at the beginning, which the two founders Frederik and Gerrit Braun did not let themselves be deterred. In August they celebrate their 25th anniversary.
ARD financial editorial team: When around 1.5 million people visit the Miniatur Wunderland every year today, it's hard to imagine that at the beginning many people said that it wouldn't work anyway. But there was headwind. What kind of sayings did you have to listen to?
Frederik Braun: Yes, that was crazy. It was exactly 25 years ago that we opened. And the year was actually characterized by everyone saying: It's a nice idea, but... That's so typically German that a "but" is much more succinct and much more important.
You're always looking for the fly in the ointment. I'll say 99 percent didn't believe it. There were sayings like: "Give me the money, it's better off there" or "Throw it into the fleet and it'll be gone anyway." That was really hard for me to bear because I firmly believed in it.
ARD financial editorial team: What convinced you to go ahead and say we'll do it?
Braun: There were one or two sleepless nights on the way to the opening, of course. But the next morning it was clearly visible to me again, it was going to happen. And if you have a brother who also believes in it, then that's incredible support. Even if he was probably a little skeptical at first.
But ultimately I had this vision in my head. I had the images in my head. I knew that I didn't want it to be this classic model railway where trains just go in circles. This is so typical of the old, dusty German hobby. I had the images in my head that there should be a lighting control, that there should be moving cars. That there should be a small world in which everyone can immerse themselves. But the road to get there was really rocky.
It doesn't work without enthusiasm
ARD financial editorial team: What was more important in the end? Was it really a business plan with lots of analyzes and calculations or simply a firm belief in this idea?
Braun: I think my brother Gerrit and I have the gene to be able to inspire people. I managed that really well back then too. If that hadn't worked, we wouldn't have had 20 such great people who helped build it right from the start. Above all, it is this immersion in a partially ideal world and the fact that the people here are happy.
But if you start a company and you're not enthusiastic, you're not excited and you're not convinced about the idea, then you shouldn't do it. You really have to be passionate about it and infect other people. That doesn't work if you say very quietly: I have a good idea. That's why it's very important: If I'm convinced internally, I have to convey that to the outside world.
ARD financial editorial team: Enthusiasm is important, but in the end it's probably not enough. It also takes a certain entrepreneurial sophistication when you now look back on these 25 years. Which business decision was the most important for your later success?
Braun: That's incredibly difficult. But my very first idea was that I wanted to build a huge model train. It became clear pretty quickly on the way to realization that this was a hobby for a very small group in Germany. And this decision not to call it a model railway, but rather Miniatur Wunderland, a small world, i.e. away from the classic model railway, was, I think, the most important decision for us internally. The fact that we said we don't put much emphasis on model railways.
But what I think is even more important today is the way our team builds here. They can do whatever they want. We only say afterwards whether something was bad and what we still want to work on. And that's the problem in Germany: Everything is planned down to the smallest detail, whereas in America you just go ahead and try something out, get the car running and then see how you can improve it.
In Germany it has to be perfect at the beginning. And we don't do that here. We let people build, we let them live out their imagination. They sometimes build very crazy details, where we say: That's too hard, it has to go. But letting them do it - I think that's really one reason for our success.
“We just got going”
ARD financial editorial team: Many leisure attractions experience a hype and at some point fewer and fewer people come. They, on the other hand, have been growing for 25 years. How can you turn a leisure attraction into a truly sustainable business model?
Braun: If I'm being completely honest: I didn't study it, we just started. At the beginning we were also afraid that the peak would be reached after two years. The greatest asset we have here is word of mouth. Most people who leave here come back excited. And if you manage to maintain this level even after ten, twenty and now 25 years, so that people go out and say, we are enthusiastic, then that is security for the future.
ARD financial editorial team: Your story sounds a bit like the opposite of what we often hear about Germany today. Too little risk capital, too little openness to unusual ideas. Do you see it that way? Are we missing that in Germany at the moment?
Braun: In my opinion, yes. But it's very general and easy to say from the business perspective, because bankers have to decide, there is a responsibility behind it, there are guidelines. And these guidelines have become so strict that there is no longer as much room for crazy ideas that cannot be clearly defined on paper. Of course I think that's a shame because I believe that many people have the craziest ideas. Of course, they have to be checked first, but I think in Germany there is a bit of a lack of courage to make something like this happen. The main concern is the fear of losing money.
