From burned store to a successful sale

On 15 April 2020, the JYSK store in Ringsted, Denmark, was involved in a fire that damaged most of the store beyond restoration. Just eight days later, the store team organised a successful sale with the surviving products.  

Store Manager Sine Starup Petersen was on vacation when her Deputy Store Manager called her on 15 April with a dramatic message: ‘Your store is on fire.’

“I rushed to the store as soon as I heard of it. Due to corona, I had my holiday at home, so it did not take me long to get there,” says Sine and adds:

“The police and the fire department were already fighting the fire when I got there. Luckily, no staff or customers were harmed. In the beginning, my team and I thought they would get the fire under control, but that was, sadly, not the case.”

The fire originally started in the neighbouring building, but after reaching a gas tank, the fire went out of control and in the end engulfed the JYSK store in Ringsted in flames as well. 

“It was hard to watch my store burning, but there was nothing I could do about it. We could only hope that the damages would be as minimal as possible, so maybe we could save some of the products,” says Sine.

Now what?

After the fire was out, Sine and her staff started getting an overview of how extensive the damages were. 

“The big question was, ’Now what‘? The warehouse was pretty much gone, but we had many products in the store that had only taken minimum damage, due to a fire wall between the warehouse and the store,” says Sine and adds: 

“We decided to try to sell the products in a so-called ‘fire sale’ in the store’s parking lot, in order to make the best out of the sad situation.” 

However, due to corona restrictions, JYSK could not be sure such a sale would be allowed from the authorities.  

“After talking to the police, we got the green light to organise the sale, as long as we made the correct guidelines for customers and colleagues, so they were in line with the government’s corona directions,” says Sine. 

Big team effort 

In just eight days, Sine and her team – plus some helpful colleagues from corona-closed city stores – quickly assembled to organise the fire sale that took place 23-26 April.

“Customers were waiting in line for about two hours, and we had to make sure they did not get too close to each other,” says Sine and adds: 

“We had markers on the ground where customers could stand in line, and we had to make sure they were only led into the sales area in groups.” 

Even though the situation with a fire and corona has been something else, the sale turned out rather successful.    

“It was a big team effort, and I am so grateful for my team and the colleagues from the other stores that stepped up to help in this crazy situation,” says Sine.