Following the success in Japan of the Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA comes another popular Scandinavian home-ware store that hopes to profit from the nation's love of Nordic style. This July, the Danish low-price retail chain Tiger plans to pounce on the Japanese consumer market by opening its first store in Osaka. Tiger will offer a range of colorful and low-priced household products, but unlike IKEA, its competition is more specific — Japan's numerous, and popular, ¥100 stores.
"Our goal is to sell high-fashion, good quality items at low, set prices," said Claus Falsig, representative director for Tiger in Japan, who explained in a recent interview that Tiger products, which are selected for their design, will be different to those offered in similar stores in Japan. "Mostly, we sell products that have been designed especially for Tiger, or products we have designed ourselves," he said.
Tiger was established in Denmark in 1995 when Lennart Lajboschitz, the owner of a small retail shop in Copenhagen, went on holiday and left his sister in law in charge of his store. Before he left, however, he forgot to tell his sister-in-law the prices of each of the products in his shop, so she kept calling him to ask about different items. Eventually, Lajboschitz told her, "Just take 10 Kroner (about ¥150) for each thing." The single price was a hit, and the store ended up naming itself the Danish slang word for a 10 Kroner coin — "Ti'er," which sounds like the Danish pronunciation of the word "tiger."