Rooms will be added to furniture stores – Newspaper Kommersant No. 185 (7386) dated 06.10.

After the departure of the Swedish IKEA from Russia, Russian furniture market players began to fight for the former buyers of the Swedish company. Against this background, the Angstrem furniture brand decided to accelerate the renewal of its salons, which it equips with rooms with ready-made interior solutions. According to experts, this format is in demand, but it will be difficult to repeat the experience of Swedish retail.

Home furniture manufacturer Angstrem plans to transfer about 100 of its own showrooms to the interior format in three years, and transfer the remaining 120 outlets to franchisee management, the company told Kommersant. Now Angstrem rents premises for its furniture stores, so the company will change them to more spacious locations. The average area of ​​the company’s retail stores after the renovation will grow two to three times, to about 500 square meters. m.

The interior concept provides that buyers will move from room to room, choosing furniture and interior items, says Dmitry Petrovsky, commercial director of Angstrem. “Ordinary furniture stores did not allow the buyer to visualize the interior of the room,” he says. This format provides that living rooms, bedrooms, hallways from some collections will be located in the so-called cube-apartments or capsules.

The renovation of the brand’s furniture showrooms will take place in stages. The first stores of this format have already been opened, for example, in Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk. In the near future, another 15 stores will be updated, and by 2025 the entire retail network will be updated, says Mr. Petrovsky.

According to the head of the CORE.XP retail department, Marina Malakhatko, investments in the renovation of one salon can amount to 20 million rubles or more. Increasing the area from 200 to 500 sq. Ms. Malakhatko calls it not too significant in the context of the new concept of stores. “Basically, 500 sq. m – these are the same IKEA mini-studios, ”she adds.

After the departure of IKEA, there was a request for a format for interior solutions, says the general director of the First Furniture Factory, president of the Association of Furniture and Woodworking Enterprises of Russia Alexander Shestakov. The expert considers Angstrem’s decision to update its salons as logical, since the company has been a supplier for the Swedish network for many years.

Marina Malakhatko believes that the interior format can be considered in demand if the exposition reflects fully equipped areas. Leyla Pavlova, managing partner of the Between2countries consulting agency, agrees that the format of an interior booth filled exclusively with furniture does not attract high traffic without an offer to purchase related products: dishes, textiles, toys, etc. The expert also cites IKEA as an example, in the sales structure of which most of it was occupied not by furniture products or kitchen sets, but by inexpensive goods for the home and interior.

Ms. Pavlova also notes that the emotional response of visitors to stores with furniture products and household goods can also be achieved by visualizing ready-made spaces, for example, through QR codes with augmented reality.

In turn, according to Ms. Malakhatko, it is impossible to occupy the IKEA niche, since it is a global product for the market with different business organization principles and other turnovers. But Russian players in this market, by changing the concepts of stores, can attract part of the audience of the Swedish brand after it leaves Russia, the expert concludes.

Alina Savitskaya