Who will gamble and who will hit the bull’s eye when trading for pallets full of returns? Find out in three new episodes from January 11, 2023, every Wednesday at 8:15 p.m. on DIE RETOURENJÄGER on RTLZWEI. In the second season of the auction program produced by UFA Show & Factual, our sales geniuses will once again be dealing with great return treasures – or sometimes a pile of junk. Presenter and sales expert Panagiota Petridou is once again in charge of the auctions for the best returns.

Online retail is booming, especially in the run-up to Christmas, and in Germany it will soon crack the 100 billion euro mark in total sales. But in no other European country are so many online orders returned as in Germany. There were 500 million returns last year alone. And many of these returned parcels were disposed of unopened by the online stores directly in order to save costs. Clever retailers have long specialized in buying and selling returned goods, including our sales geniuses who compete against each other in the varied auction show DIE RETOURENJÄGER. Their goal: to save customer returns and leftover stock from the shredder and buy pallets full of unexpected treasures at auction.

The exciting auctions are once again led by sales expert Panagiota Petridou in the second season. Charmingly, but with appropriate rigor, she brings the pallets full of supposed or real treasures under the hammer. She has her hands full: In the heated bidding duels, she is sales manager, tamer and referee all in one.

Also back for the second season: Dirk Wünning (56), the Cologne original, has been in the returns business for 20 years and is always on the lookout for goods for his online store or his beloved carnival. Hanno Zwicker (59) does business where others see no potential: the more bizarre the goods, the more creative you have to be! The Berliner-by-choice has been self-employed since the age of 17. Eva Stevanello (45), a trained master hairdresser with her own salon, was looking for a second mainstay during the coronavirus pandemic and recognized her opportunity in the returns business. She has been successfully running an online store for over a year. The couple René (56) and Daniela (51) Nimz from Berlin specialize in decorations and remnants, but are also not averse to returns bargains. Alexander Kasarinow (32) brings with him the concentrated knowledge of his family business. He is the third generation of his family to deal in returned goods.

New in 2023: Franziska Ast (36) and Stefan Barthel (35) from Taura. Since April 2022, the Saxon power couple have been running their own online retail business with returns of all kinds – from leisure and decorative items to household and electronic goods to children’s and baby products. Mathias Lange (58) and Christian Rodeck (42) from Göttingen founded “Harzer Schuhkönig” in 2019. Two years ago, the two also entered the returns business with their “Harzer Retourenkönig”. When it comes to returns, Markus Elsässer (40) from Bad Wimpfen is not far away! The full-time graduate engineer has been running an online returns business since 2014 and now sells around 400 different items, which he buys exclusively at auctions. Luis Bellingen (22) from Cologne is the youngest member of this year’s round of traders. The logistics management student has been selling returned goods of all kinds from his own four walls for a year now. Markus Stoller (37) is all about family power. He was able to convince his three sisters to join him in the returns business. They have been running their store “Bruder Markus” in Lichtenau for almost three years now, selling remaining stock, returns and new goods. Together with his sister Evelyn Peters (35), he will compete with the other returns hunters.

DIE RETOURENJÄGER premiered on RTLZWEI on February 16, 2022. The four episodes of the first season achieved a very good average market share of 5.5 percent (0.40 million viewers) among 14- to 49-year-olds. The opening episode even achieved a strong 6.5 percent market share (0.49 million viewers) in the young target group. A proud 0.99 million viewers in total watched the first broadcast of the primetime auction show as the dealers haggled over the supposedly best return pallets.

DIE RETOURENJÄGER is a production of UFA Show & Factual GmbH (based on the format “Bidding Wars” by Whizz Kid Entertainment) on behalf of RTLZWEI.