Denmark's BoConcept gears up to take on America

DSN Retailing Today, August 18, 2003 by Mike Duff

NEW YORK -- For those who have been following Ikea's newly energized expansion in North America, be aware that even more Norse are arriving in North America, and they aren't stopping at Vinland. BoConcept, a furniture and accessories retailer based in Herning, Denmark, just opened its first store in Manhattan and seventh in the United States, with plans to add as many 30 stores over the next couple of years.

The company, with about 125 stores ranging from Ireland to the Philippians, is adding three to four stores a month worldwide.

BoConcept is a bit unique as a retailer in that it is its own vendor. Club8Company, the retailer's parent, is a home furnishings manufacturer that launched BoConcept in 1993 as a vehicle to sell its products. Except for a couple of units, the stores are franchise operations.

According to its mission statement, BoConcept's goal is to bring modern designer furniture to more people, and particularly functional design. By making its own furniture, BoConcept maintains control of the design process, ensuring that its furniture and accessories can be combined in a number of ways to suit a variety of circumstances and tastes. The products are developed to have multiple functions and meet standards of superior quality at affordable prices.

BoConcept's design emerges from the Scandinavian tradition, but it isn't necessarily spare. David Most, area sales manager for Club8Company, characterizes it as minimalist, but not as much in the aesthetic sense as in the company's drive to create furniture that can be combined in a variety of ways. The idea is to let the customer put together a room that is more than the sum of its parts rather than one that is articulated around any single given piece of furniture.

Although the company is Danish, it readily draws comparison to a cross-Baltic competitor, Ikea. It's furniture isn't RTA, and in some ways BoConcept is positioned as a next step for the Ikea customer or, more generally, a consumer who has less time and financial inclination to assemble furniture than an Ikea customer but still is reluctant to throw money around too readily.

Although it might fall under the general designation of a lifestyle furniture retailer, BoConcept actually reaches a bit more widely than is typical for participants in that niche, Most said. Rather than products to suit a particular lifestyle, the goal is to provide a broad enough assortment to satisfy a range of consumers who confront certain basic needs for reasonable prices and functional fit. So BoConcept carries items that can be grouped and arranged for small apartment, an undifferentiated loft environment, an eccentric townhouse or more typical suburban hen depending upon the products selected and how they are arranged. Sofas can be combined with deeper lounging and "resting" units to build BoConcept variation on a sectional system. BoConcept "flexible sofa" comes in 12,934 combinations, the catalog states, with prices beginning under $700.

Confronting changing lifestyles and stores in 89 countries, BoConcept has to flexible. The company has to consider a global range tastes as it has grown, including those that reign in the U.S. "We're shipping to so many different countries with man a people and needs, and we're just trying to fulfill them. We look at ourselves as minimalist when designing, but we realize that in the U.S. there are customers who want big and bulky. We do have product lines that provide that. Solid and Basic is our No. 1 set in the United States, and it is sturdy, big and, I guess, perfect for the American market."

At 4,500 square feet, the Manhattan store on Madison Avenue at 30th Street in the heart of the home furnishings district, is a bit small compared with the typical BoConcept outlet, which averages about 6,000 square feet. However, the company's catalog is available at the store for those looking for more variety than is available on the sales floor, and the store is linked to its expansive web site.

BoConcept will focus its expansion on major metropolitan areas. It now has four in and around New York, one in Washington, D.C., and two around Phoenix. For now, expansion will concentrate on the East Coast, Most said.