Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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tache-pattern cups and shower cur- tains, there is little that is colored black. "Black is boring," said Helene Lassen, the company's global expansion man- ager. "We like colors. We like to add the humor, the personality to the prod- ucts. We add personality to what we call functional products, so everything has a quirkiness, but without being corny." New designs are rolled out every month, Lassen says — roughly 10 percent of the 3,000 SKU inventory. "The customer will get a new experience every time they walk around in our store," said Lassen. Most Tiger stores measure roughly 250 square meters (nearly 2,700 square feet) and are located on Main Streets and in malls. University towns are especially favored locations, ac- cording to Lassen. "We have a great ex- perience with young people, students, [though] it's not our core customer," she said. "We appeal to a very large range of customers." In its home market, Tiger is just a popular 99-cent store that sells cute and sometimes goofy stuff, but in Ja- pan and southern Europe, the chain finds itself perceived as a sort of hip- ster icon. Outside Scandinavia, though the merchandise is chiefly the same ev- erywhere — minus items of purely lo- cal interest, such as Danish flags — the response is different in regions south of Denmark. "There we are viewed as this fresh Scandinavian trendy concept, which we would love to be in Denmark and Sweden, but we have a longer his- tory here as a discounter," Lassen said. In 2012 at the opening of the first Tiger store in Japan, in Osaka, the line to get inside stretched for two hours, accord- ing to Japanese press reports. Tiger executives are looking at existing European markets for growth, and also toward new markets outside Europe. "We are right now focusing on expanding in Europe, because we have a lot of unsaturated space still," Lassen said. Germany, France and the U.K. are major areas of focus this year. The company has plans to expand to the U.S. in 2015. In most countries a local partner with a 50 percent stake runs the stores; the other 50 percent belongs to Tiger's holding company, Zebra. The Lajbos- chitzes once held all the Zebra equity, but last year they sold EQT the 70 per- cent it now holds. "Our concept works everywhere — from a suburb in Denmark, to Tokyo or Madrid or Milan," said Lassen. "It's re- ally now just up to us to roll it out every- where, and that's what EQT is helping us to do." S C T r e T a i l i n g T o d a y J u l y 2 0 1 4 / S C T 29 28-29_SCT_JUL14_Tiger.indd 29 6/12/14 5:51 PM