[마케팅]이케아, 호텔과 도시를 포함하고 있는 왕국으로 확장하고 있다

Marketing

Ikea's Expanding Empire Includes Hotels and Cities

By Caroline Winter on March 06, 2013

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-06/ikeas-expanding-empire-includes-hotels-and-cities#r=nav-r-story

Ikea is world famous for its stylish-yet-affordable prefab furniture. What many people don’t realize is that the ubiquitous retailer is but one branch of the Inter Ikea Group’s ever-expanding, modular design-focused empire, owned by Swedish billionaire Ingvar Kamprad.

On Tuesday, Marriott International (MAR) announced it is partnering with Inter Ikea Group subsidiary Inter Hospitality to open a brand of hip, three-star hotels. The Moxy Hotel line, which will open its first location early next year, aims to appeal “not only Gen X and Y but people with a younger sensibility, for whom contemporary style is paramount,” according to a Marriott press release.

Together, Marriott and Inter Hospitality plan to open 150 Moxys across Europe in the next 10 years, starting in Italy, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. 

Meanwhile, another Ikea affiliate, called LandProp, has started designing an entire 26-acre section of historic East London. Known as Strand East, the mixed-use plans include apartments, offices, restaurants, and a 350-room hotel. Streets will be for pedestrians and bikes, primarily, while cars will be kept in underground parking lots. It’s been reported that the Ikea city will include an underground system of tunnels that suck away garbage.

London isn’t the only city the company has set its sights on. “While there are similar projects in Poland, Latvia, and Romania, the Swedish company now wants to buy up vacant lots in several western European cities and build entire districts from scratch—including the one in the northern Germany city-state of Hamburg,” reports Spiegel International.

Ikea’s history of going beyond flat-pack furniture stretches back at least as far as 1996, when Kamprad partnered with the Swedish construction giant Skanska to start the company BoKlok, which builds affordable homes that are designed the better to suit a society increasingly made up of single parents, pensioners, and students moving away from home.

The company’s site says that BoKlok homes “have been created through a fruitful collaboration between skilled architects who know how to create comfortable homes and IKEA interior designers who understand how people want to live. They have been designed around factory processes which enables them to be far more efficiently constructed in quality-controlled conditions than would be possible through site-based construction.” Already, 4,000 such apartments have been built at more than 100 locations in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Great Britain, and Germany.

BoKlok’s homes are sold through lotteries that take place at Ikea stores. But Ikea furniture and stores don’t always figure into Inter Ikea’s greater plans: Strand East, for example, doesn’t plan to allow any big-box stores into the neighborhood—not even an Ikea. As for Moxy Hotels? They reportedly won’t be furnished with Ikea staples—and that’s probably a good thing. A person can only take so many Karlstad sofas and Billy bookcases.

요약

 많은 사람들이 이케아에 대해 모르고 있는 것은 이케아가 끊임없이 확장을 하고 있다는 것이다.  Marriott International은 이케아의   자회사인 3성급 호텔 Inter Hospitality를 오픈할 계획이라고 발표했다. 내년 초에 오픈할 The Moxy Hotel 라인은  X와 Y세대뿐만 아니라 젊은 세대들에게도 소구하기를 목표로 하고 있다고 한다. Marriott와 Inter Hospitality은 앞으로 10년 안에 유럽에서 150개의 Moxys를 오픈할 예정이라고 한다. 

반면에, 이케아의 계열사 LandProp는 역사적인 이스트런던을 설계하기 시작했다. 아파트, 사무실, 레스토랑, 350개의 객실을 보유한 호텔 등. 런던뿐만 아니라 폴란드, 라트비아, 루마니와에서도 비슷한 프로젝트가 있지만, 스웨덴 회사는 현재 서유럽 도시에서 빈 곳을 구매해서 전 구역을 구축하기를 원하고 있다고 한다.

조립용 가구의 이케아 역사는 Kamprad이 스웨덴 건축 기업 Skanska와 제휴해서 단일 부모, 노인, 나와서 사는 학생들이 더  저렴한 집을 만들 수 있도록 했던 BoKlok를 시작했던 것에서 시작했다. BoKlok은 편안한 집을 만드는 방법을 아는 숙련된 건축가들과 사람들이 어떻게 살기를 원하는지 이해하고 있는 이케아 인테리어 디자이너들과 함께 콜라보레이션되었다. 이미 스웨덴, 덴마크, 노르웨이, 영국, 독일 등에서 100개 이상의 지역에서 아파트 4000단지를 건축했다. 

BoKlok의 집은 이케아 매장에서 복권을 통해 판매하고 있다. 그러나  이케아의 가구나 매장은 Inter Ikea의 계획에 중요한 부분으로 차지하지 않을 계획이 없다.