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We about ourselves:: We are often asked where our cards come from and what process they undergo before they are safely packaged and sent on their way to you. We are happy to show you here.

1. Purchasing

Carried out by: Ondre Reher, Dusan Bartko, Igor Wachtel

Every year, we upload more than 700,000 picture postcards to our online shop. Yet not every picture postcard we purchase also makes it into our shop. Many postcards are simply too common, i.e. "mass goods", while some of them are simply in too poor a state to sell. In order to cover our annual supply, we therefore initially have to purchase around 2,000,000 picture postcards, and then process and utilise these.

But this vast quantity of postcards is not "delivered" to our shop. For our purchasers, this means around 70,000 km of travel on the motorways, 15 picture postcard auctions and countless collectors' fairs in Germany and Europe each year. There is hardly a postcard-related event not attended by a Bartko-Reher purchaser.

If you want to sell picture postcards directly to us at our store in Berlin, our employee Igor Wachtel is always happy to help. We have summarised the key purchase questions for you here: Purchase

2. Determining a price and allocating the postcards to one of our categories

Carried out by: Ondre Reher, Dusan Bartko, Igor Wachtel, Daniela Teichmann, Torsten Kunicke, Stephanie Anders, Jens Seidemann

"It doesn't matter whether it's Milan or Madrid, it's all Italy", as German footballing wisdom has it. We take a slightly different approach to things, of course. Our heads of department for Germany, Abroad, Motifs and Ephemera are responsible for individually evaluating each postcard, properly cataloguing it and giving it a price which is satisfactory both to our customers and for our business. It is a daily balancing act.

With over 2,000 postcards processed a day and around 30,000 potential shop categories, it is unfortunately the case that a postcard from Munich will occasionally end up catalogued under Thuringia.

By the way: there is a place called Munich in Thuringia.

3. Postcard processing and image service

Carried out by: Andreas Jahnke, Marcus Suckrow, Jens Seidemann

Every card which makes it into our online shop is first freed from its old envelope. The old dealer marks are then carefully erased. Every card is then placed in a new transparent plastic folder and scanned. This is no easy task for Andi and Marcus. Every month, the pair of them use over 60,000 new plastic folders and create more than 120,000 images - after all, we also scan the reverse side of our postcards.

It's a huge undertaking but well worth it, as our customers particularly praise the way we display our cards in the online shop.

4. Data entry

Carried out by: Andreas Spötter, Verena Maier, Daniela Teichmann, Marcus Suckrow

Because you are unable to pick the postcards up yourself when making a purchase, it is extremely important that we provide not only clear images but also a proper description. This is why everything should be described as accurately as possible. With more than 2,000 picture postcards being entered each day, the title descriptions in particular require a certain level of background knowledge and creativity from Daniela and her team. Descriptions such as "PC Horse" aren't good enough for us.

Occasionally this process leads us to create titles which make both our customers and us smile. One of our favourites: a postcard from Ilmenau showing Goethe in front of the Goethe hut was labelled "PC Ilmenau, old woman on bench outside wooden hut".

5. Managing the online shop and marketing

Carried out by: Marco Hebenstreit, Marcin Pawelski, Christian Herkt

Clear and well-structured categories are needed to make it quick and easy to search our more than 1.5 million picture postcards and ephemera. Our online shop currently has around 30,000 categories, which we continuously expand in order to make it easier for our customers to find the right postcards in their particular field of collecting interest. Marco and Christian manage the online shop with great dedication and continuously develop it further.

A marketing campaign for the football world cup, a New Year's Eve firework or our annual summer discount in August? Our entire team collects, evaluates and implements our marketing ideas.

6. Managing the orders

Carried out by: Andrea Lade, Daniel Tschernenko

The 1.5 million picture postcards currently being offered in our online shop are distributed across over 1,900 warehouse lists and 55 shelves. This makes finding the around 2,000 items sold each day into a sporting challenge. It is a challenge our employees take on each day.

It's only thanks to a special warehousing and control system as well as well-trained employees that we are able to ship orders quickly and error-free.

7. Shipping

Carried out by: Andrea Lade, Stephanie Anders, Daniel Tschernenko

Our shipping department is at the heart of our company. An order from Puerto Rico or Anchorage/Alaska? No problem!

With around 800 letters and packages being shipped each day, Andrea and her team always ensure that all paid-for orders set out on their journey across all parts of the world on time and in good order.

Even if the number of orders being shipped increases during one of our promotions, this does not pose a problem to Andrea and her team. With proper coordination, they still manage to fully package all orders on such days by the time the courier truck comes to collect the deliveries.

8. Customer service

Carried out by: Julian Eckert, Jessica Fauth, Christian Herkt

Do you have a special wish, a query regarding an open order or want to report a small spelling error? Our customer service team are skilled at and dedicated to answering every question from our more than 130,000 customers. Each day we receive up to 1,000 e-mails and around 200 phone calls. It's hard to believe, but it used to be even more.

Yet thanks to our handy customer menus, registered customers have the option of viewing their orders, managing their newsletters and making changes to their personal details independently of our shop's opening times.

"Bonjour, que puis - je faire pour vous?" We hear this friendly greeting several times a day. Jessica, our French customer service advisor, sees to the needs of our business's many French customers. Dedicated customer service for French customers? At Bartko-Reher this is just as indispensable as our English-language customer service provided by Marco. With over 400,000 French picture postcards on offer, the French market has developed into one of our key business areas. Merci beaucoup.

9. Helping hands

There are therefore many work processes between us purchasing and shipping a picture postcard. More than 20 freelance employees support our team in this task on a daily basis. Without our "helping hands", this job would hardly be doable.

So this is the process the picture postcards undergo here before arriving safely packaged at your door.
The figures provided here were recorded by us in summer 2015. We have meanwhile had to buy in "a few more" postcards and process, sort, record, manage, package and send them.
Our team will welcome you:: Ondre Reher

Dusan Bartko

Markus Weissenböck

Daniela Teichmann

Marco Hebenstreit

Igor Wachtel

Jens Seidemann

Andrea Lade

Marcus Suckrow

Christian Herkt

Andreas Jahnke

Torsten Kunicke

Andreas Spötter

Stephanie Anders

Daniel Tschernenko

Jessica Fauth

Verena Maier

Marcin Pawelski

Julian Eckert

our students

AKi - our postcards kobold

Stephanie Anders

Questions?
Your contact person Stephanie Anders will be glad to help
Tel.: +49 30 21 23 24 15
Fax: +49 30 21 23 24 14
Email: stephanie@bartko-reher.com

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