The company is planning to open eight additional stores in Hungary in the next three years, news portal index.hu has reported on Thursday. Asko’s first store sprawls on 7,000 square meter in Budapest’s Savoya Park in the 11th district. Asko chose this location because it is the company’s expansion philosophy to set up its first unit in a mall that also sports a hypermarket.
Asko plans to spend €40 million on eight new stores in Hungary in the next three years. The furniture chain owns 6 shops in Germany, 9 in the Czech Republic and 4 in Slovakia. It claims to have higher sales in the Czech Republic and Slovakia than kika, Austria’s leading furniture retailer. Asko wants to achieve a similar position in Hungary, as well. Asko has tested furniture “consumption” patterns in western and central Europe, only to find that Hungarians tend to consider their furniture as consumer durables, which makes them almost fully immune to changes in furniture fashion.
While the furniture business is much like fashion in western Europe, a wardrobe or a chest of drawers is usually bought in Hungary for a lifetime. While the life cycle of a basic piece of furniture is 6 years in western Europe, it is 20-25 years in Hungary. The market survey also found, however, that per capita spending on furniture is the highest in Hungary in central Europe. Asko believes one of the reasons is that Hungarians have also started to pay more attention to the style of their home furnishings. Asko wants to have a nationwide network of selected, unique and up to date products up and running by the time the western European furniture changing practices filter through to Hungary, as well. (portfolio.hu)
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