全球最大的家居装饰建材零售商宜家（Ikea）计划在全球增开商店，争取在明年使销售额增长10%。宜家认为欧洲市场需求可能直至2004年底才有望复苏，不过“亚洲市场正在成长”。

　　总部在瑞典的宜家公司目前在全球有186家分店，计划明年将再有16～20家分店在亚洲、欧洲和美国开张。宜家还称今后五年内在亚洲将每年新增8家分店。

　　五月份宜家曾宣布于2010年以前在中国投资6000万美元，新建10家分店。宜家日本分公司则会在3年之内成立。

　　Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Ikea, the world's largest home- furnishing retailer, is counting on record store openings worldwide to drive sales growth of about 10 percent next year because demand in Europe may not recover until the end of 2004, Chairman Hans-Goeran Stennert said.

　　Economies in Europe, where Ikea makes 77 percent of its 12 billion euros ($13.3 billion) in annual sales, stagnated in the first half as Germany, Italy and the Netherlands went into recession. Ikea, which has 184 stores worldwide, plans to open 16 to 20 new stores in Asia, Europe and the U.S. next year, the most in its 60-year history.

　　"During the late '70s and the whole of the '80s and '90s we were expanding rather heavily in existing countries in Europe,'' Stennert said in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. Now, "the Asian part will really grow.''

　　After selling items such as $25 Kivik television stands to college students and Blames baby chairs to new parents in the U.S. and Europe, the Swedish company is hoping to woo consumers in Asia. The region, together with the Middle East and Australia, now accounts for 4 percent of Ikea's revenue.

　　The company -- which last week opened its biggest Asian store in Malaysia -- plans to open five to eight new Ikea stores a year in Asia, including Australia, over the next five years. It also plans to open five stores a year in North America, and about 10 shops a year in Europe, including Russia, Stennert said. Some of the Asian outlets will be operated by franchisees outside the Ikea group.

　　"Unless markets turn pretty disastrous, then it's probably the right thing for them to do to carry on opening more stores,'' said Iain McDonald, an analyst at Numis Securities Ltd. in London. "That's generally what a lot of retailers do, to try and get their profits moving in difficult markets.''

　　Sales Growth

　　Ikea, controlled by the family of Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad, is headquartered in the Netherlands. Its sales last year were roughly the size of Sudan's economy.

　　At Ikea stores, located in low-rent suburban areas, shoppers can buy items ranging from bookshelves to couches, which they must assemble themselves. The company, founded in 1943, started by selling pens, wallets and picture frames. Now, it sells designer furniture and kitchen wares at affordable prices.

　　The $8 trillion economies of the dozen nations sharing the euro didn't grow in the three months to June, after expanding 0.1 percent in the first quarter, the Luxembourg-based European statistics office said last week.

　　Asia

　　In Malaysia, Southeast Asia's third-largest economy after Indonesia and Thailand, the government expects growth to reach 4.5 percent this year. China's economy grew 8.2 percent to 5 trillion yuan ($604 billion) in the first half and growth for the full year will top last year's 8 percent, the state-run People's Daily newspaper reported on its Web site last month.

　　In May, Ikea said it plans to spend $600 million to open 10 stores in China by 2010, a six fold increased in its China investments. It also has its eyes on Japan, ``a very big market,'' Stennert said. Ikea plans to open its first store in Japan in late 2006 at the earliest. It has bought a piece of land in the Tokyo area and is negotiating on the purchase of another, Stennert said.

　　Other retailers such as Starbucks Corp., the largest U.S. coffee chain, and Inditex SA of Spain also rely on that approach to fuel growth. Inditex, which owns the Zara clothing chain, aims to open as many as 350 new stores per year. Starbucks added 283 coffee shops in the third quarter.

　　Five Soccer Fields

　　Home Depot Inc., the world's largest home-improvement chain, added 39 stores in the second quarter. Lowe's Cos., the No. 2 in the industry, opened 24 outlets in the period and plans to add a total of 130 this year.

　　Ikea, for its part, also plans to focus on countries such as the U.K., France and Italy, where difficulty in finding land and getting building permits prevented the company from opening as many stores as it would have liked, Stennert said.

　　The company will probably chalk up sales growth of about 10 percent in the year ending Aug. 31, 2004, compared with a gain of 5 percent this year, according to Stennert. That's about half the pace at which sales were growing a few years ago. In the three years to August 2000, they increased at an annual rate of about 20 percent.

　　Ikea's new store in Malaysia drew 39,000 visitors on opening day last week. The company has invested 300 million ringgit ($79 million) on the 35,800-square-meter (385,000-square-foot) outlet and an adjoining shopping center that will open in December. The store alone is roughly the size of five soccer fields.

　　"It's beautiful,'' said Angeline Loh, 43, who spent three hours at the Malaysian store last Sunday, skipping lunch to buy cupboards and rugs. Loh, who lives in Malaysia's hilltop resort area of Cameron Highlands, drove four hours to Kuala Lumpur to visit the new store.

　　Euro Gains

　　The retailer, which buys 34 percent of its goods outside Europe, also says it has benefited from the euro's 15 percent rise against the U.S. dollar in the past year.

　　"Overall it's good news'' for Ikea, Stennert said, without elaborating. The euro's appreciation hasn't hurt Ikea's sales, he said, because the group buys and sells in almost all currencies.

　　The currency's gain has stifled exports from Germany, though, where Ikea made a fifth of its sales last year. That's the most revenue Ikea derives from a single country.

　　"In Europe, we had hoped that we would have seen the turnaround already in the earlier part of 2003,'' Stennert said. ``We have been forced to delay those expectations until the end of 2004. We think it will take another year before we really see the economies swinging back.''