Retail in Asia

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IKEA Korea opens third store

IKEA Korea

IKEA Korea will open its third store in Giheung-gu, Yongin on 12th December, as part of its bid to expand its presence in the local market.

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According to the company, IKEA Giheung will be its third store in Korea, following two in Gyeonggi Province ― the first, in Gwangmyeong, opened in December 2014, and it opened one in Goyang in October 2017.

“Creating a better everyday life for many people is IKEA’s purpose, and the opening of IKEA Giheung is serving an important role in meeting this purpose. This is a milestone for IKEA Korea and we will provide a variety of furniture pieces to customers in the southeast corner of Seoul,” said Fredrik Johansson, country retail manager for IKEA Korea, during a preview event at the store.

Occupying 49,809 square meters of land, the five-story store, with three floors aboveground and two below, will offer nearly 10,000 furniture products from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., everyday.

The company said IKEA Giheung will target customers from regions south of Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province, as the store is accessible in 50 minutes from southern Seoul, 40 minutes from Seongnam and 25 minutes from Suwon.

Among customers, IKEA Korea said the new store is looking at families raising young children, and focuses on products and arrangement suggestions for effective storage. For them, the store will have “home furnishing coaches” to help customers meet their needs. This is the first time for IKEA to provide such a service anywhere in the world.

Johansson stressed that IKEA has a long-term plan for doing business in Korea, including opening a fourth store in Busan on 13 February, 2020 and a smaller outlet in Seoul in the first half of next year. He also said the company is open to appointing Korean managers at its future stores, and plans to test several platforms in Korea.

After debuting in 2014, IKEA Korea quickly grew to be Korea’s third-largest furniture brand with sales standing at 503.2 billion won in the 2019 fiscal year, up 5 percent from a year earlier.

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Johansson said IKEA Korea has grown remarkably during the period, but added the company is not obsessed with numbers, saying it will continue efforts to make its stores “more accessible to more people.”

(Source: Korea Times)