A Store Is Born: Behind the scenes of a store opening

Store openings are events where we celebrate together with our customers, we prepare great offers and we expect great sales. But how much work is it behind a store opening? When does the planning for a new store start, and who are the colleagues involved in an opening? It is a long road until the doors of a store open for customers, and we followed it.

5 YEARS OF GROWTH

Constanța is the biggest city on the Romanian seaside. It has over 300,000 inhabitants, it is the most important Romanian harbour, and it is an important tourist destination. It was one of the first cities JYSKwanted to open a store in. In 2014, JYSK had a 965 square metre store in the city. It was quite small, but it was important for us to be present in the city. Years went by and sales went up, and the store became too small. 

Hristu Geoge, Development Manager in JYSK Romania, remembers how we decided to move the store to a new space.

“When we found out that the landlord wanted to make some changes in the shopping centre, we thought that it is a good moment to make the transition from a small store designed after the old concept to a bigger one with the new concept. The negotiations started a year and a half ago. The work for the new building started. I visited the new construction site 25 times to see how the work is done and we postponed the opening three times because the landlord was behind schedule.”

READY, SET, GO!

When the building was ready, the walls painted, the lights and ventilation systems installed, the E-Team started working. They are responsible for implementing the JYSK store concept and making it ready for receiving goods.

“Four colleagues prepared the shop layout, because we had two more ongoing projects at that time and our team only has 12 people. It took us 10 days to prepare everything: to install the floors, the wall shelves, floor shelves and marketing materials. After two weeks our colleagues in Retail were able to arrange the goods in-store,” said Vlad Bordeanu, Store Concept Manager.

CHOOSING THE BEST OFFERS

While the store was being arranged, the Marketing department made plans to promote the reopening event so that everyone in the city would hear about it. Twelve weeks before the reopening date, they started preparing the campaign paper, setting the campaign prices and selecting the hero articles.

“Based on the campaign paper, our colleagues in Retail estimate what quantities they should order for each product. They also decide where to place the products that have the most attractive prices. Two weeks before the opening, the campaign paper is printed, the radio spots are done and the online promotion campaign is ready”, explains Iraida Paiuc, Sales and Marketing Manager in JYSK Romania.

THE BIG DAY

On Thursday morning, 16 May 2019, everyone involved in the reopening started work earlier than usual. The store opened an hour earlier for the big event and everyone was enthusiastic about the day to come.

"At first I was a little afraid, because before we opened the doors, there was not a huge customer queue like we are used to from other openings. We had another store opening in the same city a month ago, and this store was just relocated, so people knew what they wanted. There were people who, even before the reopening, knew they wanted to buy mattresses, furniture, big products. And we saw this in the sales numbers,” says Vlad Bordeanu.

Alexandra Găină, District Manager, was happy with the results:

"We had clients that bought more articles and more expensive products. We managed to have bigger sales than we had at the previous opening, and this was what I was aiming for. At the end of the day, I was pleased with the results. The team, which already spent a few days working hard to prepare the opening, had a positive vibe at the end of the day, because the sales were good. The success of the reopening event motivated them.”