Action rival TEDi opens first Belgian store

Non-food discounter TEDi will open its first Belgian store in Tongeren on Saturday. Action‘s German competitor is aiming for five openings before the year is over, but eventually wants to have up to 200 Belgian stores.

Search for premises

TEDi’s first Belgian store will open on Saturday 17 June in retail park T-Forum in Tongeren. The price fighter will start there in a building of 850 sqm. Four more Belgian stores will follow later this year: the retailer does not reveal their locations just yet, but there are already vacancies online for a store in nearby Lanaken.

“We want to open four to five stores in Belgium this year. From next year, we plan around twenty new stores a year, although of course this depends on how smoothly the search for premises goes”, regional manager Koen Kerremans told local newspaper Het Belang van Limburg. He is looking for premises of around 1,000 sqm in prime locations. The long-term ambition is to have 150 to 200 stores in Belgium.

Competition for Action and Big Bazar

The German non-food discounter sells up to 20,000 cheap everyday items in its stores, such as decoration, kitchenware, toys, craft materials and sweets. “Our offer corresponds about 60 to 70 % to Action’s, but there are also items only we offer”, Kerremans says. “In addition, our offer overlaps to some extent with that of Big Bazar or Ava, among others.”

The first Belgian stores will be supplied from a distribution centre in nearby Aachen. Kerremans does not rule out a warehouse being set up in Belgium, although it is also possible that Belgian stores will be supplied from France, where TEDi started some weeks ago. Meanwhile, the company already has almost 3,000 stores in fourteen European countries.