A billion+ prospects. Wow!
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-ikea25-2009aug25,0,3900096,full.story
IKEA in China. More a theme park then a show room.
They try, they buy.
Today it’s the A/C and ambience.
Tomorrow, it will be CHIKEA everywhere (not only the font, but spelling change as well!).
One thing China does well is to mass-produce these household items on the scale hard to compete with.
But IKEA will keep reinventing itself, tossing in a satin pillow here and a straw basket there to create the right look and feel for the place. After all the construction “bad” loans comes interior decoration.
China, a hyper power of consumerism. The force of the unleashing wallet.
By 2020, we can expect a new generation of male child, mostly over fed and under exercised (due to the proliferation of automobiles and computer gaming) all want to start their own Alibaba or Baidu.
IKEA would then have to move up the value chain to accommodate Hummer drivers and Lenovo users (or suffer the fate of Sears, whose catalogue was first, just as IKEA’s now the most printed).
It made so much sense to see the Chinese bid for Unoco 76 gas and once failed, they hit the Safari trail in search for oil.
Young overseas Chinese workers will come home with a wealth of knowledge, having been exposed to the latest and greatest from abroad. While at home, their counterparts are still seen napping at the IKEA’s A/C theme parks.
Either the world is coming to China, or China will go out to the world. The Olympic is just a start. Central Casting is on a
look out for a new bad guy to play the role of X as “made in X” .
Back in the late 70’s, we used to laugh at “made in Japan” automobiles (remember the Datsun?)
I vote for the Made-in-China solar panels though.
They are quick to smell money-making opportunities. Either that or they will have to ship their workers overseas, as they did with trucks and cars during the pre-Olympic months to “clear out” the smog in Beijing.
Necessity is the Mother of Invention. Solar panel, at this time, is a good IKEA.
Thang Nguyen 555 