Global furniture giant IKEA is finally coming to South Korea

March 14, 2014 Leave a comment

March 11, 2014, 2:00 PM

IKEA Hits South Korea, Finally

JAEYEON WOO

Global furniture giant IKEA is finally coming to South Korea.

On Wednesday, the Swedish company will open a showroom, “Hej HOME!,” which will run until the end of this month in a posh neighborhood in southern Seoul as part of its preparation for the opening of its first store in Korea later this year.

Known for its blue-and-yellow superstores and build-it-yourself products, IKEA said on its Korean homepage  last week that the 230-square-meter showroom is designed to “provide a chance (for Korean consumers) to experience IKEA concepts and brand story in a comfortable home-like environment.”

Founded in 1943, the home furniture company has grown into a global giant with more than 345 shops in 42 countries. It opened its first store in China in 1998 and in Japan in 2006. Korean consumers have been buying IKEA products mostly online or via small retailers who import IKEA products.

One Twitter user @TwitChinie wrote “As soon as IKEA enters Korea, people will go crazy, like when Apple’s iPhone was first introduced.”

Not surprisingly, IKEA’s imminent arrival has set off an alarm for local furniture companies.

Hanssem, the biggest Korean furniture company, opened a 5,690-square meter 6-story flagship store just last weekend in Mokdong, western Seoul, adding to 5 mega showrooms nationwide.

“We plan to increase the number of flagship stores by 20 in the near future,” Hanssem Chairman Choi Yang-ha told reporters during the last week’s opening event, “We will try to differentiate ourselves by targeting the premium market in the face of the arrival of global furniture giant IKEA.”

IKEA’s first Korean store is 25,759-square-meters in size and currently under construction in Gwangmyeong, a Seoul suburb. The location is accessible via train and three inter-city express highways. The mall includes a restaurant and family entertainment facilities, according to IKEA’s website.

 

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment