Press "Enter" to skip to content

Swedish luxury bed brand Hästens opens first store in Africa – ZAR 35 million venture

JOHANNESBURG. The first Hästens store, selling the products of the Swedish luxury-bed maker, opens its doors in Africa this month in the suburbs of Johannesburg. The store in Fourways is part of a 35-million-rand investment in South African Hästens stores over the next two years, according to Erling Laberg, a Norwegian business man living in South Africa, who co-owns the store with partner investor, Gert van den Berg, a South African.

Soon the duo will be opening more stores, including the biggest Hästens store ever – to be located in Cape Town. Hästens, the bedmaker, isn’t in the store-owning business.

The store in Fourways is a ‘mega’ Hästens store, measuring more than 500 square meters, but the one in Cape Town will be even bigger – 1400 square metres, he says. The initial Fourways store is a ZAR 6.5-million investment, while the Cape Town store will cost ZAR 10 million to open.

“There is a lot of excitement from Hästens about this,” says Laberg. “We believe a bigger store is better than a small store… for the same reasons that a large grocery store is better than a mom-and-pop shop – because you have more goods, and more of everything.”

While the cheapest Hästens bed costs ZAR 24,000, up to ZAR 500,000, there is a market for these beds in South Africa, Laberg explains. “Yes – South Africa is a mixed market, but obviously Hästens is not for everyone,” he says. “Neither are Porsches.”

In fact, South Africa is probably a better market than some European countries, Laberg adds. “The buying power of the executive in South Africa is some of the highest in the world… your disposable income is higher here than in Europe.”

The additional Hästens stores will be build in Johannesburg’s largest shopping-centre Sandton City; Cape Town’s Waterfront; Durban’s Design Quarter; and along the Garden Route.

Laberg, also an art conservator and the owner of a graphic design business, says sales from the first new stores will help pay for the rest of them.

The South African expansion of Hästens stores comes against the backdrop of a world-wide Hästens expansion, explains Laberg. While Hästens today is a 1-Billion (SEK) business, it plans to grow to 2.2 Billion (SEK) over two years, he says.

They are planning to expand from “the No. 1 bed store, to bedroom stores,” he says, explaining that additional bedroom items (than the bed) may soon also be sold in the stores. It’s possible these items will also be less expensive than the luxury beds and thereby also reach out to a different market segment, he says, and ads that more news about this will be forthcoming later in the year. “A lot of it is being launched in April,” he says.

ScanView
The Hästens powerful luxury-bed brand is the first foreign furniture brand that opens up a chain of stores in the South African market.

The company’s clever sales pitch is just right for the aspirational middle class. The message is very much that we should – considering that we spend some 20 years of our lives in a horizontal position – get our priorities right, and spend way more than we previously have done on a really comfortable bed. Swedes have bought it lock, stock and barrel. Emerging middle classes in emerging markets, like China, are fast getting hooked. And so, we believe, will South Africa, which also has a fast growing, high-spending middle class.

In doing so, Hästens runs ahead of IKEA, Sweden most famous international furniture brand. IKEA has to date avoided setting up shop in South Africa, citing that it is too busy elsewhere. It doesn’t make sense, South Africa’s transition to democracy has liberated an unstoppable upwardly mobile society, desperate to clean out the old order and bring in fresh, new stuff.

Comments are closed.