Beko’s big Thai ambition

Europe’s second biggest selling home appliance brand Beko, has formally launched in Thailand and will soon open its first brand-building mall-based store-in-store at Siam Paragon.

Levent Cakiroglu, global CEO of Arcelik AS, Beko’s owner, said the brand’s debut in Thailand spearheads a regional ambition to become a favourite brand of consumers in the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC).

“Beko is a new generation, global home appliance brand that is sweeping the world with an unrivalled proposition to the consumer: to do more, and to do it better with the best technology.

“It’s been a winning proposition that has made Beko the UK’s best-selling and Europe’s second best-selling large home appliance brand. We expect the AEC market to add another 8 million users of our products within the next three years.”

A Beko Thailand spokesman told Inside Retail Asia the brand would open ‘embedded stores’ in large malls devoted to multiple brands of home appliances and electronics.

“They are specialty sections. Typically, these are Power Mall at department stores and shopping centres owned, operated or partnered in by the Mall Group, and Power Buy, which are those in Central Department Stores and their malls.”

Beko has launched in an initial 30 Thai department stores and specialty home appliance stores and aims to be in 100 outlets in 2015. Within three years it will expand into traditional stores, kitchen specialty stores and furniture outlets.

Power Mall, owned and managed by The Mall Group, is a leader in retail business in term of audios, home appliance, and electronic and technology products.  Its Power Malls tend to have higher per ticket sales than their primary competitor, but significantly fewer stores.

Power Buy, owned and managed by Central Group, has 80 branches in Bangkok and upcountry, and located in malls such as Central Group’s CentralWorld in Bangkok.

Beko launches with its products in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket, Pattaya, Chonburi. Next year, they will be available in Hua Hin, Udon Thani, Khon Kaen, and Had Yai.

In its home market of Europe, Beko has in just five years doubled its market share at the same time as doubling its worldwide sales.

Said Cakiroglu: “Our R&D force of over 1000 people is a major competitive advantage.  It has enabled the design of products better suited to modern lifestyles and created numerous world-bests and world-firsts in our categories, including the world’s quietest washing machine and the world’s first refrigerator with an ice-cream maker in it.

“We design products which meet the particular needs of regions. In Asia, we noted a special focus on vegetable freshness and our proprietary ‘EverFresh+’ technology helps preserve vegetables for up to 30 days and keeps them crisper, longer; and, with a view to the hot climate in the region, Beko refrigerators have automatic ice-makers that are capable of producing large amounts of ice, quickly.”

Thai-based Titanco International, which has been established for 40 years, will be responsible for sales as well as after-sales support.

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