JEDDAH, 26 August 2004 — Assembling furniture by yourself means not paying someone in a factory to do it for you. And although it can be difficult sometimes, it means you can have the furniture in your home straightaway. “That’s how demand for such furniture is consistently increasing,” says a top executive of an international furnishing company.
Sweden’s IKEA is one such international company that believes in the “assembling yourself” concept and has been “successfully promoting” the art among Saudis and expats through its stores across the Kingdom.
IKEA is opening two stores simultaneously in the Kingdom on Sept. 1. One in Riyadh is located at exit 16 and the other in Jeddah at the corner of Tahlia and Sitteen streets. “Both store projects, with a total investment of SR240 million, have taken 17 months from the first digging of the land to the finished stage,” Amin M. Jamal, executive vice president of Ghassan Ahmed Al Sulaiman Co. Ltd., the Kingdom’s agent for IKEA, told reporters yesterday.
The new showrooms have 200 percent more space than the old stores. Aside from a 45 percent increase in the number of products on offer, the new stores have 50 room settings designed to display products in a “practical and inspirational way.”
The newly designed restaurant at the store will have 500 seats with Swedish recipes for everyone to try, and a parking area for 1,000 cars. Each store will have 22 cashiers and a play area for children designed as a Swedish forest developed with a magical concept. The new stores will open at 10 a.m. and close at 12 midnight. Toward the end of August, IKEA is delivering its 2005 catalogue copies to more than 800,000 homes in the two cities.
“Despite many challenges, we’ve not only managed to keep the prices of our products consistent but have managed to reduce them by an average of 24 percent over the last five years,” he said.
The new store in Jeddah has a 120-member Saudi staff, which accounts for 60 percent of the total staff strength.
