Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/331061
f Ikea were a young woman with a trendy, crazy younger sister, that sister might be Tiger: a fresh, quirky, Danish take on the 99-cent store. This concept, whose name derives from the similar-sounding Danish slang word for the 10 kroner coin, is growing rapidly in europe and Japan. Tiger was established in 1995 by Lennart Lajboschitz and his wife, Suz, who began their retail career as street-fair vendors selling umbrellas and sunglasses; later they began investing the proceeds in trips to asia to find surplus goods and nov- elty products. Today Tiger is a chain of 300-plus stores in roughly 20 countries across Scandinavia, continental and eastern europe, the u.k. and asia — with one or two new ones opening just about weekly. Sales last year hit Dkr1.7 bil- lion (about $311 million). The Lajbos- chitzes still choose most of the merchan- dise, though today they get help from an in-house design team. The assortment remains eclectic and is subject to con- stant experimentation. Two factors underlie the chain's popularity: price and design. even in Copenhagen, nearly everything in these stores sells for less than the equivalent of $5 — not bad for a city the economist In- telligence unit ranks as the 10th most ex- pensive in the world. This is particularly impressive given that only about half the products are from China; the rest come from europe — a fourth of that from Denmark, accord- ing to eQT, the €20 billion (about $27 billion) Swedish private equity firm that owns 70 percent of Tiger and is the power behind its expan- sion. The store combines sunglasses, batteries, candy and other perennial categories with changing assortments of novelty items — such as wigs and costumes for adults — and housewares organized not by function but by visual theme: an apple print, say, repeated on brooms, plates and more. and except for the mus- I Danish discounts denmark's tiger is a stylish take on the dollar store By Bennett Voyles r e t a I l I n g t o d a y 28 S C t / J u l y 2 0 1 4 28-29_SCT_JUL14_Tiger.indd 28 6/12/14 5:51 PM