An anniversary and a few questions

You have already seen it on the front cover: 25 years of DIY International. Your specialist magazine for the international DIY and garden market is celebrating a milestone birthday. It was published by Dähne Verlag for the first time in the spring of 1989 under the original name of DIY in Europe.
The editorial team has devised a present for our readers in recognition of the event. The idea is to offer what we have continuously offered over all those years: a picture of the market that is as accurate as possible.
And because we know that our readers also tend to be in love with figures, we have made an inventory of DIY retailing worldwide. In figures, of course. In the accompanying anniversary supplement you will find – appropriately for such a milestone birthday – four different tables ranking the Top 25: listings of the 25 biggest DIY retailers in the world, in the Americas, in Europe, and in Asia-Pacific plus Africa. In addition, 25 suppliers also introduce themselves here, together with their products and services.
We have deliberately done without any historic reviews of the past, in order to concentrate on what is happening in the here and now. (NB: Starting with 1995, all volumes of the magazine are available to online subscribers in the archive at www.DIYglobal.com and accessible by keyword search.)
Nevertheless, at this point it is surely permissible to make one small suggestion which might cause people to think again about the way the mar­ket is going. After all, that is what anniversa­­r­ies are for. Has there been one clear thread running through the sector and determining its development all through this quarter-century? Of course, it has become more professional and has seen extraordinarily strong growth. And the “mission statements” and “about us” sections of company websites never fail to mention the firm’s constant orientation towards the tastes and preferences of their customers…
A reaction of “Yes, but…” is both possible and necessary here, beyond the demands of PR. Yes, the industry has indeed been enormously successful in the last few decades. But there have also been enormous omissions.
So I intend to leave you to enjoy reading our anniversary issue with a few questions geared to the future. How can the DIY stores offer more and better service? How can DIY stores bring in more quality instead of cheap products? How will DIY stores attract new customers – those women who are constantly mentioned, and young people as well? And in a world…