Inspired by the wide variety of customerfriendly stores in American and Canadian shopping centers, Werner Otto’s idea was that every customer should, as far as possible, be able to find any item they bought at least once a year on sale in at least two different stores in the center – in an attractive and covered mall that protected shoppers from the vagaries of the weather. This concept took off, and on October 23, 1969, ECE opened the first shopping center that we had developed ourselves – the Franken Center in Nuremberg’s Langwasser district, which turned shopping into an experience. Still under the management of ECE, the center has continued to evolve over the years. Today, it has space for more than 100 tenants across some 40,000 m² of retail space.