On new ground

This is how the first Dehner specialist centre came into existence, as a shopping precinct with garden centre, DIY superstore, hobby boutique, Dehner zoo, adventure park, kids’ world and restaurant. It is situated on an area of 115 000 m2, which offers plenty of room for implementing even more concepts, since the garden centre with its range of 50 000 products occupies a retail area of 13 000 m2 and the DIY store accounts for 3 700 m2.
Temporary entrance to the specialty store centre until comple-tion of the second building phase.
It was not clear from the very start that a DIY store should be attached to the garden centre. “It was our idea to create a specialist retail centre,” explains Hans- Jürgen Kendziora, one of Dehner’s four directors, “possibly even with segments that are entirely foreign to the branch. At one time we even considered integrating a range of furniture into the concept.”
The DIY store is clearly separated from the garden centre.
However, the company was not prepared to have recourse to outside firms, preferring to do everything itself. And since the outlet at Rain on the Lech has two employees with experience in DIY retailing anyway, it was the obvious thing to link a DIY store to the garden centre. Rather an unusual approach, since “Until then garden centres were always affiliated to existing DIY stores, not the other way round,” according to managing partner Albert Weber.
The DIY superstore offers a range of 30 000 products presented in departments covering the categories of timber/building components, tools, plumbing, tiles, electrical and paint/wallpaper. Even though there may be synergies with the garden centre in individual areas of the range, it is intended to maintain the clear garden centre line in its entirety. Which is something that is underlined by the spatial separation within the specialty store centre.
Inside the DIY store it looks like Dehner everywhere: clean and tidy.
Lying between the DIY store and the garden centre is the pet department or “zoo”. The offer here has been expanded by the addition of a terrarium section, as well as items for pigeon-keeping and equestrian sport. The koi installation with its 11 000 litres of water is a great attraction. It has viewing windows below the surface of the water, to the delight of the children in particular.
New ranges have also been added to the garden centre. These include the Leonardo glass shop and the Punto Ideo “Italy shop”, where there are gift articles, ceramics and…