Bye-bye, big box

The big box is dead – long live the big box! That might well be a rough description of the quintessence of the 2nd Global DIY Summit. At the event, appeals came time after time from the stage to the massed international expertise of the DIY scene gath-ered there in Rome, mostly representing decades of experience in the industry: “Watch it, the online age has taken off and you’ve missed the starting signal. You with your big boxes and high overheads, you are far too slow-moving to be able to compete with the flex­ible new players in the marketplace and offer customers the service that’s demanded these days.” Of course none actually spoke out so bluntly, but many felt that way, as can be seen from our report on the congress in this issue. Perhaps the Net’s apologists may have exaggerated a bit in their naïve belief in progress. But one thing is clear: in retailing, big is by no means so beautiful as it once was. Customers don’t want aisles that never end, not to mention the high-volume product displays that store managers still tend to swear by. The DIY store of the future will be smaller, and this future will be played out on the internet, at least partly. ‘Downsizing’ is consequently one of two key words that was on everyone’s lips in Rome: down with the costs, so down with the floorspace as well. The other word is ‘Multi-channel’ (alternatively ‘Omni-channel’, as preferred by Kingfisher CEO Ian Cheshire, or ‘X-channel’ as postulated by Obi CEO Sergio Giroldi). These are self-defensive reactions. Obviously the DIY retailers don’t want to abandon their favourite offspring, the big box, with­out a fight. This subject is by no means new in 2013. However, not one of the major DIY retailers has so far managed to put together a convincing working concept that constitutes an across-the-board sales approach covering all channels, both online and offline. It’s high time they did, two and a half decades after the invention of the internet. Will there soon be no more big DIY stores? What does ‘soon’ mean? What is ‘big’? Of course shopping facilities of 20 000 m² or more will continue to be built. But they are no longer the benchmark. Other concepts have begun to play a more important role in planners’ heads: stores of a sensible size well below 10 000 m² on greenfield sites, profitable formats for town centres, showrooms for those commuting between worlds. The big box has not reached the end of the road. But the farewells have begun… Rainer Strnad Managing editor…