The will to be

In the beginning was the future, and at the end too, and in between was the present, which the DIY store industry has to deal with. That would perhaps be a brief description of the program that the BHB offered the participants of the BHB Congress 2025: Futurologist Tristan Horx opened the lecture section with a heartfelt “I can no longer listen to the narrative of collective doom” – coach Carsten Fuchs ended the congress with his lecture “The future is made of courage.”

Regarding the “in-between,” perhaps this preliminary remark: There was a rarely felt intense desire among all participants to exchange ideas, one might almost say: to form a “we.” The registration numbers already hinted at this. “For the first time in many years, we have more than 500 participants again – 510 are registered,” reported BHB Managing Director Peter Wüst. More than a quarter of them came from the retail sector.

Peter Abraham, Head of Retail at Eurobaustoff, kicked off the conference day by introducing himself as the new spokesperson for the BHB Executive Board – an active diver and “someone who gets to the bottom of things and looks at what lies beneath the surface.” He expressed his commitment to cooperation on an equal footing (“no games”).

He explicitly referred to this in relation to the association's work. The BHB is the key platform for exchange and the link to the industry – “make the association strong, it benefits our entire industry.” Susanne Jäger, board member at Hornbach and new deputy spokesperson and financial officer of the BHB board, also expressed this sentiment.

She also emphasized how successfully the BHB works for the industry. “I believe that there are few industries that have such a strong platform,” she said, referring to the association's involvement in the European association Edra, in particular to bring the industry's perspective into regulatory legislative processes at an early stage.

The aforementioned futurologist Tristan Horx delivered what the title of his presentation promised: “Radical Confidence.” He introduced himself as an “angry optimist” who wants to bring together “wisdom and rebellion.” He listed a whole host of topics where things are not going so badly, such as the 50 percent share of renewable energies.

He contrasts the widespread “perspective of decline” with the “perspective of transition” and the “perspective of vision.” And: In the future, it will be all about relationships. “Turbo-individualization is followed by the desire for a new…