At first glance, an Aldi group store in Germany seems like an unlikely staging area for world conquest. Jars of asparagus and cans of sardines poke out of cardboard boxes piled atop pallets. The line at the registers is 10 people deep, and the product range is reminiscent of East Berlin, circa 1975. Two brands of toilet paper. One brand of pickles. But the prices are delightfully, breathtakingly low. Three frozen pizzas for $3.24. A bottle of decent Cabernet: $2.36. How about a $21 trench coat? Germany may be the land of the $100,000 Mercedes-Benz land yacht, but if s also a land of ebbing wealth, where less than a fifth of the population has discretionary income of more than $375 a month, where even haut bourgeois families will lay out for a fancy car but stint on the staples. Thus Aldi stores are found not only in working-class neighborhoods but also in wealthy communities like Bad Homburg, a Frankfurt suburb where the Aldi parking lot is thick with BMWs and Mercedes. An astonishing 89% of German households shopped at least once at Aldi last year, according to GfK. That has made reclusive co-founder Karl Albrecht the world's third-richest man, with a fortune estimated at $23 billion by Forbes magazine. Aldi-short for "Albrecht Discount"-"is a huge cult," says Matthias Koever, a Cologne resident who maintains a Web site for devotees.
展开▼
