Ikea names new Korea chief

After a seven year project to establish Ikea in Korea, the man charged with opening the brand’s first store is heading back to Sweden.

Patrick Schuerpf, the country project manager of Ikea in Korea, has been appointed to head the Global Supply Chain Management team. His role will be taken over by Retail Manager Andre Schmidtgall.

This is no demotion. The launch of Ikea Korea has gone so well the inaugural store in suburban Seoul is facing temporary closure – it is so popular that local authorities are worried by massive traffic jams in the surrounding area caused by shoppers venturing to check the new concept out.

The only serious hitch along the way appears to be an inappropriately designed map of Korea with the wrong name on a group of islands subject to international territorial dispute.

There has been some criticism that the store’s pricing is higher than Koreans might have expected, but this has failed to impact of customer traffic into the giant store.

The 27,668sqm store opened in Gwangmyeong, in Gyeonggi Province, a week before Christmas. More shops will follow, with the initial plan to focus on Seoul’s surrounds.

Ikea’s online catalogue boasts 8632 items ranging from furniture to toys, but lacking kitchenware for the time being. It launched a month before the store opened, but acted purely as a catalogue of the Korean offer with no transactional facility at the time.

Schuerpf has spent since 2008 building a foundation for Ikea’s move into Korea, largely leading the government relations and regulatory processes. Schmidtgall recently took charge of operational issues, at store level, after a 16 year career as a country retail manager in Finland and Germany. He now assumes overall control.

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