Kijkshop

1973–1976: Founding by De Gruyter

De Gruyter, a grocery chain belonging to the SHV group, announced the Kijkshop in August 1973. The format grew out of the savings-stamp schemes of Dutch grocers, under which customers could use saved stamps to buy durable goods at a discount. J. Rabbie, the director of De Gruyter's retail division, said that such schemes had hardly grown for three or four years, and that the company had looked for a better way of selling these more expensive goods. The basic range of De Gruyter's own savings scheme, Droomwensen ("Dream wishes"), became the basic range of the Kijkshop, which, unlike the scheme, was open to everyone and not only to De Gruyter's customers.

The first Kijkshop opened on 21 September 1973 in the Sweelinckplein shopping centre in 's-Hertogenbosch. About 50,000 households in and around the city received a catalogue showing 350 of the goods on sale. Albert Heijn followed within weeks with a similar format, Lita, which opened in The Hague and Utrecht in October 1973. By March 1974 the 's-Hertogenbosch store was already too small, and De Gruyter decided to open Kijkshops in Amsterdam, Arnhem, Delft, Heerlen and Vlaardingen. In November 1974, with seven stores open, De Gruyter, which was struggling in its grocery business, began looking for premises across the country for a much larger chain.

In November 1975, after more than six months of talks that had been held up by objections from De Gruyter's works council, De Gruyter and the department store group Vroom & Dreesmann (V&D) agreed to work together on catalogue stores. Each company kept its own stores, but they combined purchasing, warehousing, administration and the choice of range and locations. V&D's three Sellers & Sellers stores were renamed Kijkshop, and all new stores were to use that name. De Gruyter had eleven stores at the time. In February 1976 V&D also took over Albert Heijn's six Lita stores. In December 1976 De Gruyter sold its twelve Kijkshops to V&D, and from 31 December all 21 Kijkshop stores belonged to V&D and its subsidiary Sellers & Sellers.

1977–2002: Growth under Vendex

The chain had 37 stores by 1980, when its head office moved from Tilburg to 's-Hertogenbosch; in 1983 the head office moved again, to Zaltbommel. Kijkshop entered Belgium in 1984. There it traded as Best-Sellers, because the Dutch name meant little to French speakers. A pilot store in Düsseldorf under the name ProVisa did not appeal to German shoppers and closed within a year. After four years without growth, Kijkshop again began opening stores in the mid-1980s. In 1987 it had just over 40 stores, including five in the northern Netherlands, and planned to double that number within six years. A town needed a catchment of about 80,000 people to support a store. The chain had 51 stores in September 1988 and set itself a target of a hundred.

In 1991 there were 57 Kijkshops in the Netherlands and ten Best-Sellers stores in Belgium, run by the Vendex subsidiary Sellers & Sellers. In July 1992 Vendex announced twenty more stores over two years and a move into Luxembourg. In May 1994 the chain had 73 stores in the Netherlands and 20 in Belgium and a turnover of about 350 million guilders. Its director, P. N. Schouwenaar, said that sales had grown 10 per cent faster than the market, which he credited to the display cases and the larger range. He had received the Vendex group's annual award for its best-performing company the year before. Kijkshop had also begun accepting the savings stamps of Mobil's 400 Dutch filling stations in exchange for goods. In November 1994 the Vendex chief executive, Jan Hessels, opened the hundredth Kijkshop, in Antwerp, and announced eighty more stores in the Benelux over four years.

During the high water of 1995 the head office and warehouse in Zaltbommel had to be moved elsewhere because the dykes along the Waal were at risk of breaking. In 1996 Kijkshop opened its 125th store, in Heerhugowaard, and dropped its original green, yellow and brown house colours for red, grey and white. By then it had 24 stores in Belgium and three in Luxembourg. The online shop kijkshop.nl was launched at the end of 1999, and the stores were later renamed to match. In 2002 the company decided to concentrate on the Netherlands and closed its less profitable stores in Belgium and Luxembourg.

2002–2017: Ownership changes

In May 2002 Vendex KBB agreed to sell Kijkshop, which then had 109 stores, to the investment firm CVC Capital Partners together with five other chains: the optician Hans Anders, the jeweller Siebel, Perry Sport, Prénatal and Scapino. The price for the six was €394 million. Kijkshop's new holding company was Retail Network. The online shop won the Thuiswinkel Award in the department store category in 2005. Under Steve Evers, managing director from 2004, Kijkshop presented itself as a "multitailer" whose stores, leaflets, catalogues and website supported each other, and it aimed for online sales to reach a tenth of turnover by the end of 2007.

On 1 June 2007 Retail Network sold Kijkshop, which then had 106 stores, to the Swedish watch wholesaler Klockgrossisten i Norden (KIN), which had already bought the jewellery chain Lucardi from Retail Network. The new owner tested a different format in a store in Overvecht, Utrecht: most products were placed on open shelves for customers to pick up, with a fixed route through the store to the tills. In 2009 the chain had 103 stores and about 800 employees. In 2011 online sales made up about ten per cent of its turnover.

De Gruyter described its new shop in 1973 as a cross between a mail order business and a showroom. A catalogue was delivered to households in the area, and customers could then look at the goods in the store before buying. Prices were to be 20 to 50 per cent below the manufacturers' recommended retail prices. The company said this was possible because the format needed no shipping, packaging or administration, small premises, few staff and a narrow range of well-known brands that sold quickly, and because theft was hardly possible. C. ten Horn, the manager in charge of the project, explained the name: in American catalogue stores customers often bought from a picture, while "the Dutchman likes to see the thing he buys". He also rejected the all-Dutch kijkwinkel (winkel, "shop"), saying the store was "a buying centre for private individuals" rather than a shop in the usual sense.

The first store had about 700 goods on display, from a diamond ring to a chest freezer, mostly in locked cases. Two cashiers were its only staff on the shop floor. Customers filled in an order form that also served as the invoice and checked their purchases themselves at a table next to the till; gift wrapping was left to them as well. Nothing was demonstrated. Ten Horn said the shop did without expensive advertising, and its concrete walls and ceiling had simply been painted. In 1975 most items in the Kijkshop catalogue were 15 to 30 per cent below the recommended price, and the catalogue printed both prices and the discount as a percentage. A survey found that 74 per cent of visitors came with a purchase already in mind.

Fifteen years on, the formula had barely changed. In 1988 Trouw noted that many stores were run by one person at the till and one in the stockroom, that customers got their information from product cards rather than from staff, and that the stores were not even listed in the telephone directory, since the one employee in the showroom could not also answer calls. The range was limited to about a thousand items, all well-known brands, which kept stock turning over quickly. The head office in Zaltbommel was modest too. The range changed about five times a year, large household appliances were dropped because they cost too much to deliver, and the early repacking counter was replaced by an eight-day money-back guarantee. The chain said in 1987 that it was the largest seller of watches in the country, and that most of what it sold was bought as presents. Several competitors copied the format, but none of the imitators lasted. When the British catalogue retailer Argos opened its first Dutch stores in 1998, the Algemeen Dagblad introduced it as "a sort of Kijkshop".

Market research in 1989 found the stores unfriendly to women and their interiors cold and dull, and that many shoppers wanted advice before buying. Staff were then trained to advise on most product groups, and the range grew from 1,400 to 2,500 items, now including perfume and cosmetics. The first refitted store opened in central Rotterdam in 1991. By 1994 it sold about 3,000 items, and its director said it was "no longer an electronics shop but a small department store".