On May 24th CITO headed to the newly opened IKEA in Xindian, excited to meet with Hugo Asplund, the Deputy General Manager of IKEA Taiwan. IKEA was founded 76 years ago and is today present in 37 countries and divided into 10 franchises. The IKEA Group is by far the largest one while the franchise operating in Taiwan, Dairy Farm, is the second largest. Dairy Farm is a retail company that owns more than 100 brands spanning over several industries. Hugo has spent all of his professional carrier within IKEA and has been working at IKEA in Taiwan for around two years. During our visit, we talked about IKEA and specifically about working with franchising as business format. Today almost all IKEA stores operate under franchise agreements. A choice made to enable their global expansion, whilst at the same time live up to the vision to create a better everyday life for the many people. For a long time, the IKEA Group was equated with IKEA, until the IKEA concept was opened up for other franchises in recent years. This enables testing of new formats and allowance to find own solutions that works in particular domestic markets. In Taiwan, where space is limited, many of the IKEA stores are smaller and more city-centered compared to what we are used to in Sweden. For example, a 100-NT$ store opened up in 2018 in Taipei. We got insight in the differences you encounter when selling furniture in Taiwan compared to Sweden. E-commerce is increasing in Taiwan but is lagging significantly compared to the tremendous increase in Chinese market, and people are still willing to visit the physical stores to a high degree. Taiwanese people are generally quite price sensitive when it comes to buying furniture, which makes IKEA a great choice. The […]
On May 16th, the Swedish Chamber of Commerce Taipei arranged a wonderful evening event at Tesla’s office and showroom in Taipei. Six members of CITO tagged along and joined the many other Swedes and Taiwanese attending the event. Tesla was founded in 2003, and has grown to become one of the most hyped and recognized car brands in the world. With the world-famous Elon Musk as CEO, Tesla stands out by only offering electric cars. Many people might see them as only a car company, but they are much more than that. Tesla is all about energy , technology and sustainability. By offering both solar panels and energy storage, they are the only complete solution provider of personal transport. The panels convert sunlight to energy, batteries store it in your house, and finally that is used to charge the car during the night. The main goal of the company is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. They still consider themselves a startup, able to adjust their operations to achieve their goal. In the impressive complex in Taipei’s Neihu district, we got a presentation containing the technologies and goals of the company, as well as a walkthrough of the different buildings on the grounds. Of course, we were also allowed to explore both the Model S and X in the showroom and were in the end treated to a demonstration of the technical capabilities of the cars. The evening ended with a mingle where we could ask questions to the employees and enjoy some snacks and refreshments. We would like to thank the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and Bruce Chao, the Head of Taiwan marketing, for arranging the evening. It was very informative and fun, we had a great time!
This Friday, we had the pleasure of inviting the NCTU students going to Chalmers on exchange in the fall to dinner! we had a great time and we wish them good luck on their exchange. See you in Gothenburg in September!
