Danish furniture retailer JYSK wants to get closer to customers, and this also includes the logistics setup, where it has introduced a dark store concept.
JYSK’s strategy is called “Seamless and Closer to customer” and to support this ambition, JYSK is launching a new dark store concept in logistics. Dark stores will help JYSK become more competitive and offer a faster and more reliable delivery to customers in selected countries.
The first one will open in Dublin, Ireland, in November, and a second is planned to open in Casablanca, Morocco, in spring 2025.
“When we are present in a country, and we want to shorten the delivery time, a dark store is a great option for us. This helps us to attract new customers and create a more seamless experience,” says Ole Thomsen, Executive Vice President, Logistics.
A so-called ‘dark store’ is not a store you can visit as a customer, but a smaller warehouse with racking and shelves only for online shopping. It will have the full assortment from stores plus additional assortment, which is ready to be delivered directly to private households.
The small warehouses will be replenished from one of the 10 large distribution centres that JYSK already has located strategically across Europe. The distribution centres deliver online orders to private households as well as the full assortment to the more than 3,400 JYSK stores, but a dark store can in some cases be a great supplement to significantly reduce the lead time for online delivery.
The first JYSK dark store will open in Dublin in November this year and is around 8,000 square metres. So far, customers and stores in Ireland and the United Kingdom have received their deliveries directly from the distribution centre in Denmark. From November on, online customers will get their deliveries from the dark store.
“We will be able to significantly reduce our lead time, which will bring us even closer to customers. This is very important to continue our growth in Ireland and will also create new jobs,” says Roni Tuominen, Country Director for JYSK United Kingdom & Ireland.
A dark store is also being planned in Morocco to open side-by-side with the first JYSK stores in spring 2025. This will reduce delivery times from around 16 days to 2 days.
