IKEA has launched an unusual promotion to support the first Paris store in the center of Paris.
The Swedish retailer has converted the La Madeleine metro station closest to the new retail space into a showroom. Nearly 1,500 colorful items available from IKEA stores were displayed on the walls of a Paris metro station, ranging from chairs and armchairs that can be used while waiting for a train to soft toys and decor items. Thus, IKEA designers managed to transform a boring subway into a real bazaar, where bright things coexist with unpronounceable names of goods in Scandinavian languages.
In early May, the first IKEA concept store was opened in Paris, specially adapted for work in the city center. The two-story store in La Madeleine is about 5,000 square meters, four times the size of a standard store that IKEA opens outside the city.
As part of a new strategy to get closer to customers, the Swedish retailer plans to open similar showroom-like retail spaces around the world. Such stores represent a limited assortment and are guided by the fact that buyers will get acquainted with the products and place orders with home delivery. According to the company's own estimates, about $400 million will be invested in launching stores in the city center. In New York City in Manhattan, an urban format IKEA store was also opened earlier this month.
An unusual advertisement for a new store in the subway is not the first of its kind IKEA practice. In 2012, the company presented to the visitors of the Parisian railway station a whole apartment of 54 sqm, fully furnished with its own furniture and accessories. As part of the advertising campaign, five volunteers lived in a makeshift IKEA apartment for five days.
