Danish DIYs - Do-It-Yourself Retailers

The DIY chains found in Denmark are either Danish owned, owned by larger foreign DIY retail specialist or owned by international corporation involved in different businesses.

Do-It-Yourself stores offers a large number of building articles

In DIYs you will find all sorts of building materials, hand tools, power tools, paints, garden articles, gardening products, home decoration, home textiles, furniture, kitchens, wood, timber, flooring, lighting, kitchen utensils, plumbing and sanitary ware and many other products.

Different types of DIY stores

On the surface most DIY stores look the same. However when you take a closer look at each DIY you will find significant differences.

Some discount DIYs primarily focus on offering their products at competitive prices. Mega DIYs focuses on being able to offer a large selection of building products within each product category. Specialised DIYs focus on offering a broad selection of products within one category where they are specialist.

Wood shops and builders' merchant can e.g. be characterised as specialised DIYs. DIYs focusing service will seek to find the best possible employees and train them to make them able to guide customers in the best possible way. Local DIYs focus on offering a product range which covers the normal needs of the locals. Each DIY chain or DIY store carefully select their parameter focus in order to be as successful as possible.

DIY stores for craftsmen and handymen

Most Do-It-Yourself stores in Denmark both services private handymen as well as professional craftsmen. However you will also find DIYs and specialised shops only for professionals like carpenters, painters, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, roofers or contractors. Furthermore you will find building materials supplier companies only dealing directly with professional craftsmen.

Retailing chains selling paints and sanity ware

The Danish company Flügger is a leading Nordic paint manufacturer and distributor. Flügger has retail franchise shops in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Poland. The Flügger shops sell paint products, wallpaper, paint brushes, paint accessories and other home improvement and decoration articles.

Sadolin Farveland is another large retail shop chain in Denmark offering paints and accessories. The Sadolin Farveland shop owners are independent, but have joint marketing and product purchasing activities.

You will find many other specialised retail chains dealing with products normally found in DIYs. Bedre Bad is e.g. the leading retail chain with bathing articles and sanity ware. 

The largest Do-It-Yourself chains and builders' merchants in Denmark

It is difficult to make a correct listing of the largest Do-It-Yourself chains in Denmark. You can look at the total turnover of the DIY chains, but this information is hard to find. Another possibility is to look at the total number of sales square meters they have, but this information is also not easy to find. 

Therefore our list of the largest Do-It-Yourself chains in Denmark only takes into account the number of stores they have. The DIYs and builders' merchants with the largest number of stores are:

• 160 XL-BYG stores - Both builders' merchant outlets and DIY stores
• 89 Bygma stores - 15 DIY stores, 16 wood shops/builders' markets and 18 wood shops for carpenters and other professional craftsmen
• 84 STARK stores - 44 DIY stores and 40 builders' merchants outlets mainly dealing with wood and timber products.
• 75 jem & fix stores - All stores are DIY stores
• 40 SILVAN stores - Both large and smaller DIY stores
• 16 BAUHAUS stores - Most stores can be characterised as mega DIY stores.

XL-BYG, Ditas and Scandek

XL-BYG retail stores can either be solely for professionals, solely for private persons or be a XL-BYG DIY store which services both professional craftsmen as well as private persons. XL-BYG is the leading builders' merchant in Denmark. Wood and timber trading is one of XL-BYG's absolute strongholds. The 160 XL-BYG stores found in Denmark are owned by 80 different independent retailers marketing themselves under the XL-BYG brand.

Ditas is the company handling the joint marketing and branding activities for the XL-BYG store members in Denmark. Furthermore Ditas is one of 3 partners in the joint Scandinavian purchasing company called Scandek.

The other owners of Scandek are the Swedish Byggtrygg AB and the Norwegian Nordek AS. Byggtrygg handles the marketing activities for the Swedish XL-BYGG stores in Sweden and Nordek handles the marketing activities for the Norwegian XL-BYGG stores in Norway. In Scandinavia you can find a total of 280 XL-BYG and XL-BYGG stores and DIYs.

SILVAN, DT Group and Wolseley

SILVAN has 40 DIY stores in Denmark. SILVAN primarily focuses on servicing the private handymen. However SILVAN does also service professional craftsmen. Most SILVAN DIYs can be found near larger cities in Denmark. Silvan offers a large assortment of paints, tiles, lighting, wood, timber, kitchen utilities, screws. nails, power tools, hand tools and other DIY products for home and gardening.  

SILVAN is owned by the Danish DT Group which is the leading Nordic retailer and distributor of building materials. DT Group have a total of 250 DIYs in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Their purchasing offices can be found in Lithuania and China. DT Group owns 7 different DIYs and builders' merchants chains. 

Besides SILVAN DT Group does also own the builders' merchant chain STARK in Denmark. In Sweden they own 20 Cheapy Lågprisbygg DIYs and 64 stores of the builders' merchant chain Beijer Byggmaterial.  In Finland DT Group has 22 Starkki stores and in Norway they have 15 Neumann Bygg builders' merchants. In Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary the DT Group has 35 Woodcote builders' merchant stores.

DT Group is owned by the British company Wolseley. Wolseley is a leading supplier of building materials and services in Europe and North America. They are the world's largest distributor of heating and plumbing products to the professional market. Wolseley have retail operations in 25 different countries.

jem & fix and Harald Nyborg

jem & fix is a discount DIY chain. They have 76 stores in Denmark and 13 stores in Sweden. In the jem & fix DIY stores you will find 8,000 different products within home, garden, tools, building materials, hardware, paints, chemicals, electrical goods and plumbing. jem & fix focuses on purchasing their products in large quantities and to cut any unnecessary costs. This helps jem & fix in being able to offer their customers DIY products at low prices. jem & fix does also sell their products online.

The company Harald Nyborg owns the jem & fix chain. Under the Harald Nyborg name you will 25 stores in Denmark selling both DIY products as well as auto accessories, pet articles, clothing and household articles. Furthermore Harald Nyborg owns 6 Daells Bolighus stores which sell furniture and home articles.

BAUHAUS

BAUHAUS has 15 mega DIYs in Denmark. BAUHAUS focuses on low prices, on having a broad assortment within every product category and on offering good service and guidance for their customers. In BAUHAUS you will find a lot of different building materials and other products for house and garden. In total you will find 60,000 different products in the Danish BAUHAUS DIYs. To make is easy to find the right products all BAUHAUS stores have a clear division into specialist departments.

BAUHAUS has it's headquarters in Switzerland, but originally the company started up in Mannheim, Germany. Germany is also today Bauhaus' main market where they have 135 DIY stores. Furthermore Bauhaus has 21 DIYs in Austria, 15 in Sweden and a smaller no. of stores in the Czech Republic, Finland, Spain, Turkey, Croatia, Switzerland, Slovenia, Hungary, Norway and Estonia. BAUHAUS has a total of 220 DIYs in Europe which makes them a DIY specialist.

STARK, DT Group and Wolseley

STARK is a builders' merchant with a main focus on wood and timber. Both carpenters and other craftsmen as well as DIY builders are STARK's target group. In Denmark STARK has a total of 84 stores. Today 44 of the stores are DIYs offering a broad selection of building materials, tools and more. 40 stores are builders' merchants which specialise in wood and timber trading.

STARK is just like SILVAN a part of DT Group. DT Group is owned by the British Wolseley company. 

Bygma and Bygma Gruppen

Bygma is a Danish company with DIYs in Denmark, Sweden and the Faroe Islands. Bygma has 49 stores in Denmark and they operate with 3 different shop concepts. 18 of Bygma's stores are wood shops for carpenters and other craftsmen. 16 stores are combined wood shops, builders wood shops and builders markets. 15 stores are normal DIYs.

Bygma is a owned by Bygma Gruppen which also owns a internet DIY shop company, 2 construction material producer companies, a timber agency company. Bygma Sverige and Bygma Balslev are also owned by Bygma Gruppen. Bygma Sverige operates 11 Bygma stores in Sweden and Bygma Balslev operates 4 Bygma stores in the Faroe Islands.

Internationalisation of the DIY retail business

The DIY retail business is increasingly being internationalised. DIY companies increasingly use mergers, acquisitions, purchasing and marketing co-operations as tools for optimizing their DIY operations.

DIY companies operating in Denmark are doing their best to cut costs by purchasing large quantities of goods at one time and operating internationally either by being a part of a large DIY corporation or be an independent partner of a large marketing and purchasing co-operation seems to be the norm of the business today.