Expanding westwards

Following its latest opening in Duiven, the German home improvement retailer Hornbach now has 15 outlets in the Netherlands. Launched at the end of January 2020, the new store is the sixth new opening in five years in the neighbouring country and the 160th Hornbach store in total.
"The development in our neighbour to the west is very pleasing. With the launch of our online shop in 2015 and more recent successful store openings, we have been able to raise our profile considerably and steadily consolidate our market share in the last five years," comments Wolfger Ketzler, the board member at Hornbach responsible among other things for expansion.
The new store is situated next to an Ikea store at an exit from Autobahn 12, not far from the German border. Around 34 mio euros have been invested in this.
Apart from a drive-in for building materials, highlights of the over 14 000 m² retail area include a bathroom and kitchen centre with 3D planning system, a picture framing shop, paint competence centre and garden centre with pet department.
Hornbach introduced the option of reserving items available in-store online and collecting these at an agreed time back in 2011 in the Netherlands. A WLAN hotspot with free dial-in, a host of online terminals on the sales floor and - entirely new - a self-scan app for autonomous check-out of the shopping basket and payment by QR code at the till are examples of how the business model has been digitalised.

After Austria, the Netherlands was the second region outside Germany to which Hornbach, a family firm established in 1877, expanded when it started up in Zaandam on 2 April 1997. Its stores are currently being upgraded by the addition of a drive-in for building materials. In The Hague, expansion was completed in mid-Janu­ary 2020, while building work has now commenced in Nieuwegein. Further expansion of the branch network is also scheduled.
If the latest awards for the German chain are anything to go by, it seems to be doing something right in the country next door. It received the accolade of best DIY store for the 14th time in the customer survey "Beste Winkelketen van Nederland" and took the award for best web shop in the DIY sector for the second time.
This evidently also has something to do with the…