HYDERABAD, India - IKEA says it's ready to open its first store in India on August 9, after several years of preparation. Planned for the Spring but delayed by monsoons, the store's design will be tailored to local conditions, including assembling furniture, following lengthy company research.
“We’ve done over 800 home visits. Or 'people visits' as I call them,” says Mia Lundström, Creative Director, IKEA India.
Mia Lundström, Creative Director, IKEA India during one of her many “people visits.”
Lundström says IKEA learned that Indian people are very house proud, and that providing value for money – Paisa vasool in Hindi– is key. IKEA India also learned that home furnishing is not a priority for most Indian people, and that virtually nobody in India has heard of the brand, despite the fact that IKEA has been using Indian suppliers for many years.
The Swedish company also discovered that Indians are not likely to want to assemble furniture from flat packs, as in other countries. Since flat pack manufacturing is an essential part of IKEA's business model, it has built in a hefty furniture assembly shop at the Hyderabad IKEA, with 150 workers who will open and put together the products for customers. In fact, IKEA has encountered this trend in other markets as well, including the U.S., the reason that in 2017 it acquired Task Rabbit, a business that handles assembly for its customers with prices starting at $36.
UrbanClap carpenter in Bangalore, India.
The Wall Street Journal reports that IKEA spent weeks training its furniture assemblers, with 75 of them women, and has also trained a cadre of carpenters accessed via UrbanClap, a Bangalore, India freelance labor source.
India is a key market for IKEA, which has seen sales growth slowing. The India furniture and hard furnishings market will grow from US$20 billion in 2015 to US$30 billion by 2020, according to research firm Technopak.
The IKEA Industry division of the firm is the largest producer of wooden furniture in the world and manufactures wood-based furniture for IKEA customers, along with external IKEA suppliers., we represent the IKEA production capacity. IKEA has developed unique joinery and reconsituted wood products to reduce the materials and weight in its furniture.
The IKEA Lisabao collection was awarded in the international Red Dot Award. It is entirely produced in the Polish factory of IKEA Industry in Lubawa
Ikea Industry consists of 40 production units in 10 countries: China, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and the USA, with around 19,000 co-workers. Its top five production countries are Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Portugal and Sweden, producing two types of furniture: solid wood and lightweight or board-based wood.
Ikea Industry is active within forestry, sawmills, furniture component production and furniture production, as well as product development. It is further divided into four divisions: solid wood, flatline, boards and outside purchased goods. The Solid Wood division manufactures items such as IKEA's popular Hemnes bedroom series and the Ivar storage system. The Flatline unit produces Pax wardrobes, Kallax storage units and Lack tables and wall shelves.
IKEA's Boards division is a captive plant that produces high-density fiberboard, particleboard and lightweight board, used in its own factories for lightweight furniture that is easier to handle and assemble.
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