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By Ian McConnell

Business Editor

Danish interior design retailer BoConcept is on track to approximately double its annual revenues in Scotland to more than £8 million on the back of store openings and growth in online sales.

Franchisee Adam Davidson, who employs 55 staff across four concessions in Scotland, said order intake for the financial year from April 2021 to March 2022 had been £4.46 million.

He added: “This year we are budgeted for £8.2 million but, with an increased focus on B2B (business-to-business) sales, I expect us to exceed that.”

The BoConcept Scottish operation said, in addition to growth generated by new stores in Tillicoultry and Aberdeen, its relocated Glasgow shop and its existing outlet in Edinburgh, it had also seen a four-fold rise in online business, “following the launch of a new, Scotland-only e-commerce website”.

Mr Davidson plans to launch more stores in Scotland, starting in 2025.

The former civil engineer, who acquired his first BoConcept high-end furniture retailing franchise in Glasgow in 2002 with an investment of £40,000, said the growing demand for the retailer’s products and services had been fuelled by people spending more time in their homes during lockdown.

The BoConcept Scotland website was developed by Coatbridge-based digital agency Hybrid Anchor.

Mr Davidson said: “Because we are part of a franchise, using the UK website, it was hard to get daily, or even weekly, statistics on where our leads were coming from. That’s why we decided to do our own Scotland website. Scotland is a very separate entity and it was the right thing to do. It has given us more flexibility.”

He added: “Online customers tend to order products, whereas people who come into the store and work with our design consultants will order an entire look.

“What surprised me was the way in which the market held up and then expanded throughout the pandemic. The year after Covid hit was our best year to date for Glasgow and Edinburgh. We now have four stores and an experienced team and the foundations are there for a really cracking future.”

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Mr Davidson estimated the profit margin at the EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) level would be “in the region of 15%” in the current year to March 2023.

He said: “We are slightly ahead of budget to end July (+8%) so looking very positive despite the chaos in the world. I put this down to ramping up the training for new and existing teams plus our production times of four to eight weeks when other companies are sometimes quoting six months and customers reporting up to a year in extreme cases from other retailers.”

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BoConcept’s first Scottish store opened in Glasgow’s Princes Square in 2002. Following a tenure on Sauchiehall Street, the new, expanded BoConcept Glasgow store is now located on Ingram Street.

Mr Davidson said: “Further expansion will definitely happen but for now it’s about consolidation. We have had growing pains and now we have four fantastic stores. We will renovate Edinburgh next year but we will wait until 2025 to open our next store.”

He added: “We also may open a series of smaller stores that feed into the larger stores so, in Glasgow, we might have something in Byres Road or Silverburn feeding into the main store and, in Edinburgh, we might have something out at Fort Kinnaird or Stockbridge feeding into Edinburgh. Further north, we might do something in Inverness and Perth, feeding into Aberdeen.”