Another Praktiker for Turkey

Opening day for Praktiker in Istanbul: a greeting with flowers.
Every year between 200 000 and 300 000 homes are built in Istanbul – offering an opportunity for traditional DIY stores. As a rule the owner-occupied flats erected are relatively simple, but great importance is attached to interior decoration. As a result, this section takes up around one third of the floorspace in the new DIY superstore in the Kartal district of Istanbul with its weighted total of 8 500 m2 in retail area. Shopping in Turkey is a family event and 50 per cent of sales happen at weekends. That is why, apart from two religious holidays, Praktiker is open 363 days a year and from ten in the morning to ten in the evening every day.
There are 145 employees to look after the customers and about 35 000 different products stocked by the store. It is no use looking for building materials here. Great importance is attached to the entire range of products for bathrooms, to fabrics and furniture and gardening as well. The Turkish customer in a DIY store is quality-conscious and more prepared to reach for goods in the high-priced segment than for cheap mass-produced items. He also expects a comprehensive advisory service, which is why Praktiker is providing in-house training for its employees. Services including cutting out fabric, an agency for contacting tradesmen and a shuttle bus for customers without a car are designed to make for a pleasant visit.
Furnishing fabrics by the metre can also be made up to order.
In the stores special “price auditing” departments with a staff of six or seven work permanently on the problem of pricing. The aim is to combat inflation, which still remains high (though this year’s hoped-for target is only 35-40 per cent) through observing normal price movements and comparing various inflation indexes (housewares, garden articles, power tools, etc.). At the Praktiker stores in the country 80 per cent of the products available are sourced in Turkey, a ploy that is also designed to hold prices down. Approximately 350 Turkish firms are listed.
It is three years since the fundamental principle that expansion in Turkey should concentrate on the three major cities of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir was decided on. The second Turkish store after Ankara, at Gaziantep in the east of the country, does not entirely fit into this strategy, but now this year there is to be a much stronger push towards the centres of population. In the second half of the year Istanbul is scheduled…