First JYSK store in Ireland exceeds expectations

It only took the first JYSK store in Ireland five months to reach the ambitious goals for its first full year.

A great effort from employees, a large assortment of products and great prices are some of the reasons for the success of the first JYSK store in Ireland in Naas, Co. Kildare.

Head of Retail in Ireland, Roni Tuominen, is taking stock after the first five months in Ireland with the first JYSK store in Naas, in connection with the annual results from JYSK Group, which were announced yesterday.

“We do not have numbers for a full financial year here in Ireland yet, and for obvious reasons we also have nothing to compare to previous years, but what we can say is that the first store we opened has already exceeded the ambitious expectations we had for turnover for the first year. In five months we have already sold the amount that we thought we would sell in our full financial year,” says Roni Tuominen.

On sales performance, JYSK Ireland is in the top five performing countries when compared to the 20 other countries in the JYSK Nordic Region.

Warm welcome

One of the reasons for the success of the store is the very warm welcome, JYSK has received from the Irish customers, ever since JYSK founder, Lars Larsen, cut the ribbon for the store on the day where JYSK could celebrate its 40th anniversary on 2 April 2019.

“I was really amazed to see how the Irish people welcomed us. We were a little concerned that there would be no queue on our opening day, but the first people lined up at 2am the night before the opening. That queue continued throughout the entire first week; every day when we opened the store there was a new queue of customers patiently waiting. So, it was a great, great success and way beyond our expectations,” says Roni Tuominen.

In its opening month the Naas store performed second best out of 1,200 stores across the Nordic region, which covers 20 countries. And the strong performance continued with an average of 10,000 customers making a purchase each month since the opening in April.

Popular assortment

In general, Roni Tuominen is happy with JYSK's performance on the Irish market, where five stores have now opened the doors to customers.

“The stores are really busy and we have a lot of customers. Up until now, we have only opened in small cities and the perception of our brand is already really strong. In general, the customers seem to really like our product assortment. It is trendy, but still very competitive when it comes to pricing compared to other retailers in the market,” explains Roni, who highlights Furniture and Garden as two of the bestselling categories.

Employees perform impressively

Even though the product assortment is selling well and is popular among the customers, the most important reason for the success is the people selling the products in the JYSK stores, according to Roni.

“I am very impressed by how my colleagues in the stores are performing. We have a very young team so they do not necessarily have a lot of experience, but they are doing a fantastic job."
- Roni Touminen | Head of Retail, JYSK Ireland.

“I am very impressed by how my colleagues in the stores are performing. We have a very young team so they do not necessarily have a lot of experience, but they are doing a fantastic job. We have had  a lot of positive feedback from the customers, and I think that is one of the key factors as to why we are already doing so well,” says Roni, who was the only employee one year ago, when he moved from Finland to Ireland and became responsible for the expansion in Ireland.

Today, he has close to 60 colleagues in JYSK Ireland with more being hired at the moment to fill positions as they look to expand the store network.  

Heading south

Based on the success in Ireland, JYSK has raised the plans for expansion. From the beginning, the initial goal was to open 15 stores in Ireland. Now the number of stores to open over the next three to five years has been raised to 40. 

On 14 November, the fifth store was opened in the town of Youghal, a small city in the South East of Cork with around 8,000 inhabitants.