IKEA has recently opened (on May 6th) a new store in central Paris. This confirms what we have seen lately: the Swedish brand is reinventing itself. And, in order to do so, it has had to step outside its comfort zone.
IKEA is moving away from city-outskirt locations and into city centres with the aim of adapting to the lifestyle of its customers. In the case of the new store in the French capital, it has created a new urban retail concept based on the lifestyle of the people living in Paris.
It becomes obvious that the Parisians profile is very different from the profile of people living outside the city or the rest of France. There are various significative aspects that distinguish Parisians from other French people (for example, they live in quite small apartments but housing prices are very high, most of them are rent contracts, only a very small percentage of people own a car, every time there is less people living in one home and every time there are less homes with children, among other things).
IKEA La Madeleine (it is called like this because it is located just next to the well-known Madeleine Church, very close to the Concorde Square) wants to be a ‘mirror store’ in which the Parisians feel like home. To this end, at the moment of conceptualising the store, other aspects -beyond the objective ones- were taken into consideration. Thus, the IKEA France team involved in this task, tried to capture people’s approach and attitudes towards everyday life in this city.
Lluis Martinez-Ribes, co-founder and partner of m+f=!, has done an interpretation of this store. You can read the complete text on his LinkedIn article.
