IKEA Indonesia
Ikea opens first store in Indonesia.
Thousands packed the flagship store of Ikea here last Wednesday as the Swedish flat-pack furniture retailer opened its doors to customers for the first time in Indonesia.
The openings of stores by major international brands are major events in retail-happy Indonesia.
The first opening of a store by Swedish clothes brand H&M has had lines of hundreds of people queuing up for hours before the opening bell.
Ikea Indonesia marketing director Benedicte Hansen said some had driven in from as far as Bandung to get hold of some of Ikea’s neutrally designed wares, while social media was virtually awash with re-posted images of the company’s signature Swedish meatballs.
Ikea allowed word of mouth to do much of the promotional heavy lifting, but the company did shell out for a billboard in Central Jakarta’s Plaza Semanggi and covered the outside of Taman Anggrek Mall’s vast LED display in the west of the city.
The store held a media preview by inviting journalists for a tour on Monday and distributed 700,000 copies of its 2014 product catalogue in the Alam Sutra and South Jakarta areas.
The store’s 1,200-car parking lot was full by the middle of the day on Wednesday, local media reported.
Ikea laid on shuttle buses for those parking at Alam Sutera mall.
Visitors also took to social media using the hashtag #IkeaIndonesia to comment on the visit to the 364th store worldwide.
Instagram user @heytheresia posted a photo of Ikea’s Swedish meatballs, which garnered almost 1,000 likes.
The store also offers a halal restaurant.
Azalea Firnindya from Bintaro, South Tangerang, said she was slightly disappointed by the number of items that were not yet in stock and because the Ikea food section had yet to open.
“The price is higher than in Singapore and Malaysia, but it is better to buy it here because you don’t have the hefty cargo fees,” she said.
Ikea Indonesia is housed in a 35,000-sq-m plot with 55 different rooms, including three complete home settings built to the scale of a studio apartment.
The brand, which operates in 46 countries, will compete with other houseware retailers already established in the country’s malls, such as Ace Hardware Indonesia and Chitose International.
Ikea offers a do-it-yourself concept, which is new to Indonesia. In order to keep prices down, the company requires customers to pay extra if they want to have their product assembled or installed for them.
Source: New Straits Time