Beate Richter - Creative meeting place in the founding city

Anyone with a little time on their hands will discover a wide range of school and office supplies as well as craft materials and art supplies, such as stationery, paints, canvases, iron-on beads, soapstone and handicraft materials.

Party decorations and gifts are another important business area. Balloons & co, birthday candles and streamers are very popular and large packaging balloons for vouchers, money gifts, cuddly toys and much more are also filled here. For weddings, christenings, communions and confirmations, money gifts are often designed and special decorations selected. If you want to make a candle, for example, you can buy matching wax motifs, wax plates and wax letters and numbers.

Before it was used as a craft store, Aschaffenburger Straße 42 was still a restaurant and Beate Richter, the owner of Art+Creativ, was still an employee of a large company. Although she was not really happy there and kept thinking about becoming self-employed, the mother of two always hesitated to give up her secure job. So she kept dreaming until something happened that she still sees today as a twist of fate. Her employer offered its employees severance pay in the course of downsizing. The children were already older and after gathering initial information at the Ostpol start-up campus, she enthusiastically accepted the company's offer. She actually had two business ideas: firstly, there hadn't been a craft store in Offenbach for a long time and secondly, she had discovered her passion for making and designing candles while on vacation. When suitable business premises became available in Bieber, Beate Richter combined both ideas and founded Art+Creativ. A store where creative people can find materials and accessories for their hobbies and projects and a candle workshop where they can also design their own candles.

Unfortunately, the candle workshop met with little response from customers. Cooperation ideas with schools, the adult education center or the youth art school also failed. Although the theme was somewhat better received in the run-up to Christmas, the room rent for the whole year and the energy costs for the liquid candle wax were far too high. The founder had to think in business terms and weigh up the costs and benefits. With a heavy heart, she decided to give up the candle workshop and offer more school and office supplies instead, for which there is great demand all year round.

Since 2019, Beate Richter has added creative courses for young and old to the repertoire of the craft store: seasonal themed workshops, vacation courses for children or pre-Christmas decoration and gift workshops make Art+Creativ a real meeting place for creative people and those who want to become one.