After H&M opened its very first flagship store in Saigon this year, furniture retailer IKEA will be the next world-famous Swedish brand to establish a presence in Vietnam.
On Monday, Bloomberg conducted an interview with Inter Ikea Chief Executive Officer Torbjorn Loof on the company’s future expansion plans. According to Loof, South America and Southeast Asia are the top two regions on IKEA’s expansion radar after its arrival in India and Latvia this year.
He confirmed that in Southeast Asia, Vietnam and Philippines are the next in line to get IKEA stores, after Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia.
If things go according to plan, within the next five years, shoppers in South America, Vietnam and the Philippines could welcome the first IKEA outlets.
IKEA currently has more than 400 stores in 49 markets in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia.
Rumors of the Swedish outfit’s Vietnam entrance started as early as 2015 when Mike King, the retail manager of IKEA Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, told Thai newspaper The Nation that his company was interested in launching stores in neighboring Vietnam and the Philippines. Nonetheless, there was no concrete plan back then.
Vietnam is already producing various homewares for the Swedish brand; however, only until now did IKEA fans in Vietnam get the confirmation that the brand is indeed planning to enter the local market.
[Photo via Bu.edu]
