HISTORIA.NET
HISTORIA - Our Family Business
For over 35 years, our small family business has been an expert in unique gift ideas. We believe in the power of personalized gifts that come from the heart.
Our commitment also comes from the heart: for our customers' concerns, but also for genuine sustainability, lived diversity, and excellent training. We call this value-oriented leadership.
We are proud of our two shops: HISTORIA.net, specializing in vintage gifts, and LittleStars-Shop, which focuses on children's and baby gifts.
Our Vision: To Give Joy - To Experience Joy
To achieve this for our customers as well as our team, we give our best every day - and we do it with a lot of fun and team spirit.
On this page, you can learn more about what makes HISTORIA unique, how it all began, about our children and baby gift shop LittleStars, and about our commitment to sustainability.
HISTORIA: What Makes Us Unique
The Largest Newspaper Archive in Europe
Our assortment's centerpiece is approximately 5 million old newspapers and magazines, which we offer as original gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or other celebrations. We believe it is the largest commercially available collection in Europe. A remarkable collection that we have amassed over decades. An authentic old newspaper is a personal gift that takes you on a journey back in time. It’s educational, original, authentic, and personal.
Unique Pieces Thanks to Personalization
The icing on the cake is our personalization service. We customize nearly every one of our unique gifts according to your wishes. In our workshop, our team crafts your HISTORIA gift with great skill, care, and the support of excellent machinery. This is how your one-of-a-kind gift is created, one that remains memorable. And that’s exactly our goal: gift ideas with personality.
HISTORIA - From the Beginning to Today
Starting from the Bottom: The Beginning in the Basement
As a trained historian and archivist, our founder Dr. Joseph Nietfeld had the HISTORIA idea more than 35 years ago: He wanted to share the fascination that comes from old newspapers and magazines with others. He started by offering original newspapers and magazines as gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or other celebrations. HISTORIA began in the basement of Joseph's house.
Tradition Meets Modernity
Today, Joseph runs HISTORIA together with his daughter Dr. Sophie Bender, who is in charge of the commercial side. Our team now includes about 30 people, all committed to ensuring that our customers can order unique gifts and receive them quickly. We have built our company headquarters on the Freiburg freight station site. We fit right in here, as our neighborhood is as dynamic as our team.
Although we sell products whose charm lies in their age, we are a highly modern company. This is evident in our IT systems and our sustainable energy supply, as well as in the way we work and communicate. At HISTORIA, old meets new, tradition meets modernity.
The journey continues
And as Joseph is still as curious and active as ever, he continues to expand our newspaper archive by traveling throughout Europe. Over the years, not only has an impressive newspaper archive come together, but also a fascinating collection of old wines and spirits. In addition to him, many other employees take care of exciting gift ideas that allow our customers to spread joy.
LittleStars - Our Shop for Baby and Children's Gifts
Apart from our work, we all naturally have private lives, primarily involving: family. Together we have over 30 children! With so much concentrated parental and family experience, we've put our desire into action and under the brand LittleStars, we offer a wonderful selection of special gifts for babies and children (and a few for their proud parents and grandparents). These are for all the “LittleStars” who inspire awe, laughter, desperation, but above all, love in us every day.
Importantly, Our Range is Thoughtfully Compiled. We consciously avoid plastic and scrutinize our suppliers, their sustainability goals, and their business practices. All the textiles we offer are certified, and we don’t chase after short-lived trends. LittleStars gifts are robust, durable, and timeless, so they bring long-lasting joy. With personalization, they become real favorites that accompany a baby or child for a long time.
Sustainability - Continuously Improving Based on Values
HISTORIA - Outstandingly Sustainable
We are proud that our efforts in sustainability have already received external recognition multiple times. For instance, we are a klimaFIT-certified company and were awarded the MobilSiegel for sustainable mobility by the city of Freiburg in 2021.
Sustainability is a Buzzword of Our Time. What Does Sustainability Mean to Us?
Appreciative interaction, responsible action, reliability, and openness are the four most important values of our company. This means for us:
- Openness Regarding Our Actions: We have created our first CO2 balance sheet for 2022. We are currently working on our first sustainability report. We maintain an open communication culture in our company.
- Responsible Action: As a family business, we work not for short-term profit, but for the long-term well-being of all involved. We have set measurable climate protection goals and guidelines for selecting products, service providers, and business travel. We provide high-level training and offer employees further education opportunities.
- Reliability and Continuity of Our Sustainability Commitment: We have committed to continue reporting our CO2 values and to continuously reduce them. We have established a cross-departmental climate team that continuously proposes new measures and monitors their implementation. We offer permanent employment contracts.
- Appreciative Treatment of People and the Environment: We implement this with many small and large measures. From organic fruit and fair trade organic coffee and organic (oat) milk to recycled cardboard as packing materials, to investing in a large PV plant, a geothermal heating source, and gradually converting our fleet to electric vehicles - we have made it our maxim to opt for the climate-friendly alternative whenever in doubt. For unavoidable emissions, we make a climate contribution.
This Is Us
The Management Team
As a father-daughter duo, we have been leading HISTORIA together for over 10 years. The combination of Joseph Nietfeld's historical and archival expertise and Sophie Bender's business acumen ideally complements each other. The fact that we work well together and continue to get along well privately is proven by the fact that we even spend our summer vacations together.
We are proud of every individual on our team and the constant development we see in our company.
Customer Service
The reviews from our customers make it clear: Our customer service team is fast, accommodating, and just nice. Whether on the phone, via email, or in chat: Our colleagues are highly knowledgeable and also fulfill special requests. Here you are in the very best hands!
Since we train merchants in e-commerce, you may well be dealing with one of our trainees when you contact us.
The Warehouse
Our warehouse poses unique challenges. We store over 5 million newspapers and magazines. And when you order one, one of our fantastic colleagues finds it in no time. This involves an excellent filing system, special orderliness and overview - and a deft hand, because paper that is sometimes over 100 years old must be handled with kid gloves. Our warehouse team performs top-notch work every day. By the way: We train warehouse specialists!
The Workshop
Internally we say "the engraving," but the colleagues from the workshop do so much more! Here, real artists are at work who are also craftily skilled, technically adept, extremely careful, and super fast. Whether it's wood, textiles, metal, or leather - the team knows which personalization technique looks best on which product. Many a special request has already been fulfilled here! And the team is always experimenting with new, great products and techniques. And good humor is included for free.
The Shipping Team
Half-full packages, careless packaging, inadequately secured goods: That's not how we send things! Our shipping team effortlessly and elegantly packs your goods in no time at all. The atmosphere remains relaxed even under pressure. Our trainees in the field of warehouse logistics also spend part of their training time here. What a team!
Marketing, IT & Accounting
Where do we offer what at what price, and how do we technically implement it? We deal with all topics that are hot in e-commerce, whether it's data protection, AI, assortment maintenance, project management, UX design, database management, or right of withdrawal - no one can do it alone, so we work closely as a team. Our trainees in e-commerce and our students in online media spend the majority of their training time here and work as full members of the team.
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