Ikea bullish on business opportunities in nation

Attending the China International Import Expo for the seventh straight year, Swedish home furnishings and housewares retailer Ikea has made the event and Chinese cultural elements the muse of their product development, according to a senior executive.

"We've been here for seven consecutive years just from the start. It has been an exciting part of the year and something that we value very highly as well," said Pontus Erntell, CEO, president & chief sustainability officer of Ikea China, during an exclusive interview with China Daily ahead of the 7th CIIE to be held in Shanghai from Tuesday to Sunday.

Erntell said Ikea's display booth at the expo is inspired by the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420) essay Peach Blossom Spring written by Tao Yuanming (365-427). By mixing Chinese culture with Nordic elements, the booth of about 360 square meters highlights three themes — sustainability, the silver economy and consumption stimulus.

The biggest achievement in the CEO's opinion is the consistency of being there over the years.

"I think it is about our having many good examples of range launches. Then I would like to highlight this Chinese New Year collection and I think there are a lot of things to learn from it," said Erntell, adding this is the fourth year in a row that Ikea has made a global debut of Chinese New Year collections at the CIIE.

"This is an integrate part of how we work with range development also in a China context. In China, we have the full value chain as one of the few countries outside of Sweden, where we also build and develop ranges based on insights into life at home here in China. And it's of course to respond to trends and opportunities and needs in China, but it's also scaled to the world."

Erntell added that there are many good examples of products being developed locally in China, based on insights, needs and opportunities. The products have been launched first in China and scale up globally as a success.

Another example is its technical fabric motion sofas. Since their debut at the 2022 CIIE, more than 25,000 such sofas have been sold in China, he said.

Over the past six years, the CIIE has served as an important stage for foreign companies to seek opportunities in China's development. Up to 2,500 new products, technologies and services have been debuted at the CIIE and more than $420 billion worth of deals have been inked, said Tang Wenhong, assistant minister of commerce, during a recent State Council Information Office news conference.

wang_ying@chinadaily.com.cn