XXL Sport och Vildmark (XXL) has returned with a store in the Swedish city of Västerås, at the address Hallsta Gårdsgata 7, in the Erikslund shopping center. In the late summer, XXL moved the stores in Uppsala, Västerås and Växjö to new locations only a few hundred meters from the old sites. Its reason was rent increases that the company saw as extreme.
According to XXL, visitors to the new, smaller Västerås store will see major updates to the store’s interior. All stores have undergone changes to create a new experience, the company says. The assortment is more or less the same, but the volume of goods has been reduced to optimize the customer’s flow through the store and provide a better overview of the range.
The new store, which boasts what XXL calls Sweden’s second-largest hunting section of XXL, also increases the availability of staff, who should now be free to devote more attention to customers. In addition to these improvements, XXL’s repair shop is now more centrally located, the chain having identified the shop as crucial to customer service. There customers can get help or repairs with equipment, even if it was purchased from competitors.
According to XXL, the move to Västerås and the opening in Sweden’s eighth-largest city (with a population of around 200,000) are part of a new business strategy. The company seeks eventually to have more physical stores than it has today and to tailor its shopping experience to customers’ consumption patterns. XXL sees Västerås as an important part of this, as the city has a strong tradition as one of Sweden’s most active sports and outdoor cities. XXL has been operating in Västerås for 11 years.
