Ideally located in Cairo Festival City, Al-Futtaim newest home improvement brand “Homeworks” has arrived to Cairo to shake up the home improvement market entirely in Egypt. We sat down with Al-Futtaim’s Retail Country Manager Esam Hafez to know more about the company’s new killer home brand with over 70 Million Egyptian pounds in investments.
Tell us a little bit more about Homeworks.
Homeworks is known for the ‘do it yourself’ ‘DIY’ concept, which is known worldwide but mainly in West Europe, Canada, and USA, where you can usually find it in specialized big stores in home improvement products. People abroad are more accustomed to this concept as it is less time and effort consuming. So this concept basically consists of divisions and subdivisions. The main divisions are 1- Home living which includes everything about home improvement including the kitchen, the bathroom, and the floor. 2- Outdoor living where you need to include furniture, BBQ equipment, camping tools and so on. 3- Home improvement: including DIY which you will mainly find power and hand tools, while the power tools revolve around anything that deals with electricity, the hand tools are like screwdrivers and similar tools. 4- Garden which includes plants and all gardening accessories.
How are Homeworks’ services different to IKEA?
We don’t compete with IKEA, we complement each other. However, Homeworks isn’t similar to IKEA; as for example, if you just moved to a new home that needs to be furnished, you will first head to Homeworks to buy your tools, appliances, equipment, paint, etc. to fix and adjust your home. Once done, then you head to IKEA for furnishing options.
How does Homeworks fill a market’s need?
Here in Egypt, when people need to buy something for their home, they usually head to several different places; while they still do not get a consistent world-class retail experience. By identifying this market gap, we decided to invest in this business, to offer people one shopping destination for all their needs for their homes, be it essential tools, decorative items, outdoor furniture or gardening accessories, etc.
How does Homeworks fill the needs across the different classes of customers out there?
In our plan, we included three price levels for each product category. We don’t call these levels A, B, and C but we call them Good, Better, and Best. So you can find the product you want with three different prices. It does not mean that expensive products have better quality. The quality of our products is very critical. It just means that the product with the higher price will offer you more options. On the other hand, our priority at this time is to focus on the positioning of Homeworks brand rather than the profit/pay back.
How does Homeworks stay up-to-date with the latest trends?
Our products’ experts have long-rooted business relations with the top brands in home improvement products, locally and internationally – as we also deal with the top producers of several home products in Egypt. You will find the top brands in each category in Homeworks. We also monitor the feedback of the market through customers to respond to consumer needs and continue to be up-to-date. Our store associates, who are also trained to assist customers to ensure a rewarding shopping experience, play a huge role in updating us with the customers’ feedback in order to add, remove, edit based on customers’ needs.
Also our DIY concept which allows customers the opportunity to experience the products before buying will help us in a better understanding for our consumers’ needs to successfully align with their requirements and expectations.
How many Homeworks branches are you planning to open in Egypt?
We definitely plan to expand to cover the whole country. We are starting with three key branches; two in East Cairo and one in West Cairo. We have opened our first branch and aiming to open up to 15 branches all over Egypt.
