Galeria Kaufhof is a chain of German department stores. You’ll find a branch in every one of the country’s major towns and they serve the same function as, say, Debenhams in the UK.

This is middle-market, big footprint, department store retailing and as such is not really where you might expect to find anything particularly cutting edge in terms of the way that things are done.

However, wandering through the pleasantly affluent streets of Stuttgart last week, Galeria Kaufhof proved this assumption unwarranted. The show-stopper was the windows – in-store it was pretty much as mundane as usual.

For those unfamiliar with middle-European budget airlines, German Wings is an outfit that ferries people all over the country from which it takes its name and beyond for not a lot of money. Galeria Kaufhof has seen the rise and rise of this Teutonic Easyjet and come to the conclusion that it has popular appeal.

So much so, in fact, that it has put a German Wings jet in the windows of its Stuttgart emporium. Well, more or less. The retailer has taken a mocked-up, lengthwise cross-section of one of these machines, complete with seats and passengers about to disembark and put it in the window as an advert for the joys of travel and associated merchandise.

You might think there’s nothing terribly glamorous about budget jets, but it was a new enough angle on window display for people to actually stop and stare in mild disbelief at the mannequins that seemed to be midway through removing their luggage from the overhead lockers.

And for those shoppers pausing to look at this panorama for just a few moments longer, the retailer had even hidden a couple of speakers in the window display with a message informing passengers to take care when removing luggage, etc, etc… you know the rest.

German Wings is a low-cost airline being advertised in a relatively low-cost manner in the windows of a lowish-priced department store. It’s the perfect marriage of brand with the vehicle from which it is being sold. And it was good enough to slow passers-by down and make them consider entering the shop.

The only question has to be, how often do you see this sort of thing done effectively in the UK? The opportunity to write in praise of German display technique or visual merchandising is something that doesn’t happen very often. But, in this instance, a simple idea has been well-executed and left its UK equivalents in the dust.