The tiger with a human heart

The interview with Lennart Lajboschitz was held in October 2018 and is being re-published to mark the opening of the first Flying Tiger branch in Israel.

 

Lennart Lajboschitz dedicated his twenties to soul searching: he worked as a table-tennis instructor, substitute teacher at the Jewish school in Copenhagen, comic book salesman, photographer and even, for a short period, attended a yeshiva in Jerusalem. One day, a local Jewish business owner asked him to photograph his merchandise for a catalog. Once the job was done, the man asked him what his fee was for a day’s work. “You don’t have to pay me,” Lajboschitz surprised him. “Of course I’ll pay you, you need the money,” said the businessman, laughing, “nothing will ever become of him.”

Thirty-something years later, Lajboschitz is a multi-millionaire and the father of all knick-knack shops. Flying Tiger, the Danish variety store chain he established with his wife, described by one analyst as being “a bit like an Ikea marketplace on speed,” enjoys an annual turnover of over $800 million, with 2-3 new stores opening every week. The chain is fast approaching its 1,000th store. Lajboschitz is also one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Copenhagen, and it just so happens that his is one of the most beloved chain stores by Israelis abroad.

And here he is, sitting in front of me, and how do I put this gently? For a man who makes billions selling knick knacks in a period where environmental consciousness is no longer just for naggers, Lajboschitz is quite the hippie: a mane of silver hair frames his bright face, his clothes are utterly informal, and he talks about the need for a social revolution. Lajboschitz prompts us to raise our eyes from our phones, the very same ones for which he sells thousands of outrageous cases, and look at each other. Even, god forbid, talk. That is why three years ago he came up with Folkehuset Absalon, a social community venture.

We meet at Absalon, a former church that has undergone a colorful makeover courtesy of prosperous Danish artist Tal R (also an Israel-born Jew), in the heart of trendy Vesterbro, once a rough neighborhood known for prostitution and drugs. Here is where Lajboschitz holds his meetings, has weekly dinners with his wife and children, plays ping pong and most of all, executes his vision of connecting people via a different kind of social salon, free of politics, religion or government funding.

“Contrary to the popular Danish and overall Scandinavian approach, we’re not looking for the greatest common denominator,” he explains, “we don’t ask people ‘what do you think? How should we do it?’ We don’t ask what they want because we want to tempt them and take them to places they had never known existed. I, my wife and two of my children have a vision group with employees from the center, with whom we meet on occasion. But in the beginning we had to be really determined, because otherwise we would have been dictators of sorts in regards to what we wanted to achieve, with a very clear vision, and this place would have turned out to be a project for social causes. In a rich country like Denmark, everyone is focused on helping the weak, and that’s not our mission. Our mission is to create a place for regular people to connect with one another. I think we succeeded.”

And it truly is a success. Joyful sounds rise from the much-hyped communal dinner at the center, where approximately 200 people gather every night. Most diners start off their evening as complete strangers, required to communicate with their surrounding guests under various restrictions and guidelines – no reservations, no table service, and everyone has to pick up their dishes from the kitchen. These limitations are embedded in the center’s framework, a hybrid shared workspace and community center with classes offered to different crowds. “When the staff told us people keep asking where the bathrooms are and suggested we hang a sign, at first I said, ‘yeah, that’s a good idea’,” says Lajboschitz, “but then my wife, the smart one, said, ‘no, we won’t put a sign because people need to ask: excuse me, where’s the bathroom? And then someone would reply that it’s behind the yellow door on the bottom floor, and through that obstacle people socialize. If I ask you something and you respond, then we already know each other. And that’s what we were trying to achieve.”

Lajboschitz mentions a backgammon club, the largest in Denmark with approximately 200 members, that made the center its home, and about the residents of the neighboring building that gather there every Thursday – “they were neighbors but never spoke to one another before, and now they have their regular meeting.” On Christmas Eve, the Lajboschitzs sent the center employees on holiday and took over the entire operation, particularly the full-capacity Christmas dinner service. “But we don’t celebrate Christmas, we celebrate December 24th because it’s not a religious thing,” he adds.

How do you celebrate December 24th and who are your party guests?

“We sing together, we make magic. In terms of guests, it could be a divorced parent that it isn’t his year with the children, or small groups of four people, say, because it’s a bit small and could be boring. And also tourists, and Jewish friends."

This heterogeneity – Christians and Jews, tourists and locals, old and young – is at the very heart of the center, or as Lajboschitz puts it: “we want diversity. We want the elderly to be hip, not just the youngsters.”

From a Jerusalem yeshiva to a Copenhagen flea market

Lennart Lajboschitz was born in Copenhagen in 1959, the son of a Jewish merchant who had fled Poland before the war and a Swedish-born kindergarten teacher. As a child, he witnessed Denmark’s foundations as a secular-social-democratic country being laid, and his parents encouraged him to question everything, and took his opinions seriously: “In the 1960s, the most important thing to teach a child was to have self-confidence and to express himself,” he once told Britain’s Evening Standard.

At 16 he left school and began traveling, taking on casual work to support himself. When he was 20, he met Suzanne – his future business partner, wife, and mother of their four children – during May Day events in Copenhagen. The two continued to travel together for two years before Lajboschitz entered Talpiot Yeshiva in Jerusalem, “not because I was religious, but because I wanted to learn more.” You won’t find this particular biographical detail in anything else written about him; “I’m not interested in promoting that I’m Jewish because I’m just a person, a human being,” he clarifies.

Why?

“Because religion makes a difference to people, and therefore I don’t define myself by my Judaism; I’m just a person doing various things. But Jewish culture influenced me in many ways - I went to the Jewish school in Copenhagen, and so has my wife, my children and my father."

Lajboschitz continued jumping from one job to the next, and although had never received more than a high-school education, he even worked as a teacher. “He would enter the classroom and we would all jump at him, we loved him,” says the bicycle artisan and former Batsheva Dance Company dancer Ari Rosenzweig, who was a student at the Jewish school in Copenhagen in which Lajboschitz worked as a table-tennis instructor and substitute teacher. “He’s got this unique charisma, not macho like, he would tell us stories and we would sit quietly and listen, and you know what 12-13 year old boys are like, with raging hormones, whenever we’d get a substitute teacher we’d just go rampant. Sometimes he would say: ‘today we’ll do yoga’. It was the 1980s, and Lennart is not some yoga guro, for us it was just - Wow.”

Flying Tiger was conceived in 1995, when the Lajboschitzs – who at the time owned a surplus store selling umbrellas, socks and sunglasses, an expansion of their stand in the Copenhagen flea market – went on vacation and left Suzanne’s sister in charge of the shop. Since they could not remember the prices of all of their products, they instructed her to sell everything for the same price of 10 Kroner (less than $1.5). The Danish pronunciation of the word tiger sounds roughly the same as the word for the tenner coin (“tier”), and so by the time the Lajboschitzs were back from their holidays they had a new name and a new concept. Within three years they had opened 40 stores around Denmark; legend has it that their fast-growing chain was in such great need of employees that they used to ask random people in the street to come work for them.

In fact, randomness would turn out to be a key concept in the first years of business: in the past, Lajboschitz said that the decision to open Flying Tiger’s first store outside of Denmark, in Iceland, was because they had in fact wanted to travel there. The chain’s expansion into the UK in 2005 was the result of a meeting with an old school-mate, a penniless photographer who had settled in England and came up with Tiger’s model for distribution outside of Denmark – 50% ownership of the Zebra corporation and 50% ownership by the local partner, with no franchises. There are 96 Flying Tiger stores in the UK today, making it number three in the list of countries with Tiger stores – right behind Spain (123 stores) and Italy (122). More exotic Tiger stores locations include the Faroe Islands, South Korea, Estonia and Japan.

Flying Tiger offers a wide variety of homeware, accessories, toys, paper products and other knickknacks. Its magic lies in a winning combination of great design with a twist, fair quality and reasonable prices – most of the products go for less than 50 Kroner ($7.5). The raison d’etre is that good design is a social right that should be accessible to everyone, without having to take on a mortgage to enjoy it.

And social rights are certainly not something to be dismissed in this Scandinavian chain. In May of this year, the chain published its corporate responsibility charter, stating its commitment to zero-tolerance of forced labor. This commitment is applicable to all 400 of its suppliers across the globe, 77% of which are based in China. In the spirit of today’s ecological agenda, the company has a detailed plan for reducing its ecological footprint.

Flying Tiger prides itself on being in a category of its own, somewhere between a design store and a discount gift shop. The resemblance to its eastern sister Ikea can be seen in the user experience: the chain’s stores lead visitors through a predetermined route, from entrance to exit, passing along eye-level shelves, which provide a secure atmosphere. The shelves are filled with colorful, eye-catching and surprising items. And the chain boasts its ability to surprise, displaying 300 new items each month.

“Suzanne was the buyer for Tiger during the first few years”, says Lajboschits, “and when she bought things, it was not their functionality in mind, but their emotional value - what will this product do for you? Candles are a good example. You don’t buy them because you need them - if you need the light to turn on the electricity, right? - but it’s because it gives a feeling, an emotional reaction. A stupid football in itself is not interesting, but if that football will make you and your child go and play - I’m happy."

And it worked. Without online shopping, campaigns or presenters, without sales or members clubs, Flying Tiger cracked the algorithm. As perfectly summed by a British client interviewing for the Evening Standard, “When I go into a discount store, I feel poor. When I go to a Tiger store, I feel like a millionaire.”

From 1,000 stores in 30 countries to a small but ambitious community center

It’s a slow morning at Absalon, and Lajboschitz is blending in the eclectic clientele of the young and the young at heart, sitting around long tables; some of them are playing chess, others are absorbed in their laptops, and some are talking. He is a volcano of human warmth, occasionally erupting in laughter and peppering his words with quotes by Martin Buber and Ingmar Bergman movies.

Lajboschitz spent 20 years navigating Flying Tiger, but since 2015 has been content with only his position on the Board of Directors. Even earlier, in 2012, he sold 70% of his shares in the company to Swedish holdings company EQT. The chain has since more than doubled its stores, and it seems that this is not exactly Lajboschitz’s decorative cup of tea.

“We started Tiger because we needed money to pay the rent and get some food," he explains. “Then my motivation shifted into how we work with other people, what is our connection to the guests in our store, and what is the experience we’d like to create for them. But then, all of the sudden, I became the CEO of a huge company, with nearly 6,000 employees and hundreds of stores in 30 countries. I became an operating officer and a businessman while what I really wanted was to be more of an anthropologist. So I left the company."

A Bloomberg report from last February revealed that EQT hired Morgan Stanley investment bank regarding the potential sale of Zebra, Flying Tiger’s parent company, for $900M. Such a transaction, if realized, will earn Lajboschitz – holder of 28% of the company’s shares – some $260M.

But he, of course, prefers to talk about a social revolution. “We want people to socialize more because we feel that is something that’s really needed today, with the developments in technology, globalization, political environment”, he says, starry eyed. “I hope that together we will be able to create more of the important things, that more people will come to Absalon and there will be lots of babies”, he bursts in laughter. “No, this is not a dating thing, but we do want to encourage people to connect with each other in different ways."

Absalon is truly piquing quite the interest. Lajboschitz says that the center has already been visited by the mayors of Copenhagen and Helsingør – Frank Jensen and Benedikte Kiær, respectively – and Princess Catharina Amelia of the Netherlands, who spoke with the center’s patrons in an attempt to understand what it has that they lack. Lajboschitz believes the answer can be found in a 1923 essay by Buber, I and Thou, where the author claims that man is formed and shaped through dialogue, during verbal interaction.

“So many of our values are between I and Thou, like love and friendship”, says Lajboschitz. “When it comes to I and ‘Them’ those values no longer exist. I think the fact that this place is privately owned makes it a personal thing, while if it was owned by an institution or a municipality it would have been easy to just say: ‘okay, there’s no one there, it’s actually a nobody’. This is why you’ll hear stuff like ‘I can steal from a company but I’ll never steal from you’. I think that we have personalized this place and that people can feel that."

Lajboschitz aspires for the center to become sustainable, so that the model could be replicated, but this is still a long way off. “We’re losing quite a bit of money,” he says of the center, the annual expenses of which – $335,000 – are fully funded from his own pocket. The most popular attraction which attracts the crowds on a nightly basis, is the 50 Krone ($7.5) dinner, a considerably modest price for Copenhagen.

“We’re not making money out of it”, Lajboschitz says. “60-80% of what we serve is organic food, and if there’s anything left we donate it. But the good thing is that we don’t have much food waste because we’re sold out every night, so we know that we have to cook for 200 people, and that will be sold, and that’s it. It’s very rare that we’ll use what’s left for lunch the next day."

Word of the Absalon dinner has spread and become a real tourist attraction. On the evening of my visit, I share the line with a teacher from a boarding school at the center of Denmark, along with her 22 students; the carefully-constructed table seating finds me surrounded by a twenty-two-year-old backpacker from Alaska in the midst of his cross-European trip, a grandmother and her three-year-old grandson who wanted to switch up the regular dinner routine and seems to have not realized exactly what she was getting herself into, and a local senior citizen with his daughter. The awkwardness is broken when one of the center’s staff members approaches the podium, grabs the microphone and gets everyone laughing. At no point did I feel obligated to talk to anyone, and still the conversation was flowing as if by its own accord. The next goal: a 2.2 acre hotel, entrepreneurial incubator and restaurant

Absalon is not the only endeavor in which Lajboschitz is currently involved. He is invested in the Gomore car and ride sharing project, and in two new hotels in Hornbækhus – an hour’s drive north of Copenhagen – where guests are encouraged to mingle with the locals through shared dinners.

But the most ambitious goal will be realized next year when Lajboschitz and his family – including his 91-year-old grandmother, Suzanne’s uncle and 87-year-old mother, and of course Lajboschitz’s children and grandchildren – will move to Søkvæsthuset, a sprawling 18th century mansion in Copenhagen’s Christianshaven neighborhood, a former Naval hospice and currently an arsenal museum. Danish media reported that Lajboschitz paid $25 million for the 2.2 acre property, some of which he plans to transform into a hotel, entrepreneurial incubator, shared workspace and a restaurant.

“I saw my mother and her great grandchild making food together, and for me it was magic, because Maya who is five years old, listened to my mother very carefully, and my mother understood that Maya has a different reference point. Maya doesn’t know how to make pancakes but my mother does know how to make pancakes, Maya knows that my mother’s hearing is very bad so she has to speak up, etc. The whole thing proved to me that there can be a very good connection between old and young, so I would like to make a restaurant run by kids that are younger than 10 and older than 80, I think that could be fun."

Lajboschitz has four children: Simon, who owns a VR business; Rebecca, an artist and metalsmith; Jonas, a screenwriting student and Noah, who works at Absalon. He proudly says that all are financially independent, even though his tax advisor has begged him to transfer some of his fortune gained from selling his share of Flying Tiger, to get tax benefits. Lajboschitz refused, for ideological reasons.

“My biggest concern was that my kids would be rich kids”, he says. “I didn’t want to take the challenge away from them, and therefore I do not support them in any way. It’s not that I don’t want the best for them, of course I want the very best for them, but I think it’s best that they have to make their own way. If we go abroad for a vacation we will invite them, but otherwise, today, they have to take care of themselves. So even though it will save me money to give them money, that’s not what’s important, what’s important is to not spoil your kids, and not to take the obstructions away from them."

His advice for young entrepreneurs is not necessarily traditional: “Find the justification to why your idea should live, the purpose, and if you don’t have it, I hope it dies”, he says, and bursts into laughter. “I think if you have a mission, and you are able to say ‘the purpose of this is this’, then it’s like a compass of where you want to go, and then you can actualize it in so many different ways. Also, stay in bed 15 minutes longer in the morning, and think sideways instead of straight."