Swedish furniture maker IKEA plans to spend about 300 million euros (US$327 million) in South Korea over the next three years to increase market share in the East Asian country.
“We are investing a lot in Asia,” Tolga Oncu, head of the company’s retail Ingka Group, said in an interview in Goyang, South Korea, on Saturday on his first visit to the country since 2018.
The group is to open another so-called blue box store in Seoul and is considering “many more smaller formats.”
Photo: AFP
IKEA, known for its do-it-yourself business model, has four outlets in South Korea, and offers online shopping and delivery. The company is seeking to increase consumers’ access to stores, Oncu said.
“Maybe you don’t need to walk more than 15 minutes to get your products in a convenience store or somewhere,” he said.
IKEA has in the past few years invested in automation improvement of its shipping service, which can lead to lower prices, he said.
“Korea has one of the highest quality of last-mile deliveries,” he said.
The brand is planning to cut prices globally and is looking at 10 percent to 20 percent reductions for key products in South Korea, he said.
In the US, IKEA has lowered retail costs on almost 1,000 products, including on its popular Billy bookcase, and plans to keep cutting.
The firm began the US price-cutting push in January and is also lowering prices across the more than 60 other markets where it operates. Consumers have responded by increasing their purchases of those cheaper items at IKEA stores.
The furniture maker sells 9,500 products and raised prices across the board for the first time in decades during the COVID-19 pandemic because of supply-chain disruptions. Now, declines in the prices of raw materials and lower transportation costs have enabled the cuts, the firm said.
“I think in general for IKEA worldwide, it is looking like this is going to be one of the biggest price reductions that we have ever done in one year,” Oncu said.
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS