VM Visit Golbeck Berlin: Change in Commerce - a Car Dealership Becomes a Mobility House

Christoph Golbeck, owner and managing director of the traditional eponymous car dealership in Berlin-Friedrichshain, is well-versed in transformation. After all, the company, founded in the GDR in 1982 by Hans-Peter and Jutta Golbeck and specializing in Trabant cars, was swept up in the turmoil of reunification and switched to the Volkswagen brand in the 1990s. The headquarters and nucleus is still Kreutzigerstraße, an area that, by today's dealership standards, is tight and only somewhat awkwardly accessible from the rear side, located in the heart of the bustling and trendy, decidedly "green" district. Clearly, it also takes the "milieu" here into account. But it is also in line with a general trend and necessity to rethink mobility.

Tradition and Modernity

And yet it is beneficial for the mix during the phase of transformation that there is still the second and larger location in Buch, where most things still revolve around the automobile and new cars are being sold in close collaboration with a trade partner, increasingly electric ones. Golbeck has made a clear cut with this business in Kreutzigerstraße, a small revolution. However, repairs are still carried out here, a tradition of which they are proud despite all the enthusiasm for "New Mobility."

"Keeping a vehicle in operation for as long as possible is also a form of sustainability," says Golbeck. 

The company has 40 employees at the two locations. And so, the headquarters in Kreutzigerstraße retains the creative leeway to try something new without giving up the core business. For Golbeck, a talkative and quick-speaking and -thinking Berliner and a PhD political scientist with a flat cap and vest, has no less in mind than: The reinvention of the car dealership. Thus, technical transformation follows political transformation.

Few New Cars in the Past, Today Scooters and Bikes

The label "Mobility House" now adorns the windows facing the main street, the vast artery of the Frankfurter Allee. In the past, the tight spaces could accommodate two or three new cars. Today, or more precisely since its opening in September 2021, carefully selected bicycles, cargo bikes, and e-scooters are displayed here. And Golbeck's bicycle mechanic Veit is tinkering with an Urban Arrow e-cargo bike. This brings us to the heart of the matter.

"We want to further develop the idea of the neighborhood workshop," explains Golbeck.

Because repairing cargo bikes is a sensitive issue in the industry. There is a lack of suitable workshops that alone have the necessary equipment and competence for the sometimes over one hundred-kilo heavy and bulky cargo bikes. Lift, pit, tools, and if needed, a service vehicle or towing service are all available, says the company transformer.

"This is exactly where our opportunity lies. We have all these competencies and can transfer them to the new world and scale them to a new level, also for commercial users and fleets," Golbeck philosophizes.

In the business sector, he sees greater openness, emphasizing the importance of a mix and following an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary approach. Craftsmen who today habitually use five VW vans might in the future have only three, one of them electric, combined with two cargo bikes, he outlines in the trade journal "Berlin Motor Vehicle Trade," where his ideas are not dismissed as mere "fantasies" of a dreamer but taken as interesting new approaches from a serious forward-thinker.

Exchange Old Car for Cargo Bike

Golbeck takes it a step further in terms of transformation, which he understands literally: Through the expertise as a dealership, they can also buy used cars and trade them in for a cargo bike. The purchasing specialist Dabag is also part of the mobility house and contributes to the business mix. On his table, flyers from the alternative traffic club VCD are as naturally placed as the magazine of the Autoclub Europa, titled "Rethinking Mobility".

"Our goal is clear: to bring the mobility transition into the dealerships. We want to be a shopping center for mobility," Golbeck articulates his vision.

The passionate road cyclist lives this lifestyle himself and knows that in everyday life, you are often faster by bike and can just as easily do a big shopping trip with a cargo bike. He believes that this message can even reach die-hard car fans in a former dealership. Conversations start through the service, customers become curious and inquire, and thus through the "dealership" interface, people start to think, Golbeck sketches. Speaking as a social scientist, he refers to a "low-threshold" entry into the transition, leveraging existing customer relationships.