But the last place you'd think of as the starting point of a really convincing future concept is the north-west of Russia and its city of St. Petersburg. But one company has its headquarters and its main distribution area there, and they are planning just that: to finally use digitalisation in DIY retail, in a sensible and profitable way.
The name of the company is Petrovich. It isn't very well known in the west, but is definitely one of the top ten DIY retailers in Russia. However it sees itself as really being in fourth place after three foreigners: Leroy Merlin, Castorama and Obi, making it the largest Russian DIY store operator.
When the boss of marketing, Igor Kolynin says: "The time of the big boxes is over," then he really knows what he's talking about. After all, the Petrovitch stores are from 1 000 m² to 3 500 m² in size, the warehouses around 10 000 m² and in the hard building materials trade in the St Petersburg region, the company claims a market share of 50 per cent. And Petrovitch's online sales already have a 35 per cent share of sales and a growth rate of 30 per cent a year.
He has spoken about the death of the big box before, for example at the Global DIY Summit in Stockholm a year ago, where he gave awestruck listeners an impression of what Petrovich means when its talks - admittedly somewhat ambitiously - about the store of the future.
"We believe there are two major types of products. We segment them by appropriate way of shopping," explains Kolynins its basic theory. "One type can be bought distantly. You don't have to see cement or gypsum plasterboard before you buy it. The second type is decorative products. As you choose tiles, or flooring for yourself you have to be sure that you will love what you have bought."
Here customers - in particular female…