Götz Werner built dm on the idea Idro rejected — and gave half of it away for store two

Götz Werner joined the Karlsruhe wholesale drugstore Idro, a company of Carl Roth, in 1969. After a sales reorganisation he proposed running drugstores on the discounter principle — self-service, permanently low prices through bulk purchasing, combined with trained advice. Management rejected the idea, and Werner left to go independent. When West Germany abolished fixed pricing for drugstore goods in 1973, he opened his first store in Karlsruhe: the discounter that Idro had turned down.

The money ran out at the second store. Günther Lehmann, a shareholder of the Pfannkuch supermarket chain, financed the expansion — in exchange for 50 per cent of the company. Austria followed in 1976, and by 1978 dm had more than a hundred German stores. Werner told the story himself in his autobiography, Womit ich nie gerechnet habe (What I Never Expected).

The idea Idro rejected became Europe's biggest drugstore chain: dm today runs 3,945 stores with 13.6 billion euros of revenue and close to 72,000 staff. Götz Werner died on 8 February 2022. The rejection is remembered as his founding story, and the survival deal at store two as its permanent price — half the company, given for the money to open the next one.