Challenge

As a retailer of affordable, well-designed furniture, IKEA have been unintentionally supporting the ambitions of small businesses for years – from the very first Malm desk, all the way to the 50th Långfjäll office chair.

But with their strong entrepreneurial origins and social mission of creating a better everyday for the many people, there was much more they could be doing to answer the bespoke needs and offer help to small businesses, particularly given their entrepreneurial origins and social mission of creating a better everyday life for the many people.

Inspiration

Small businesses owners are independent thinkers and enjoy the autonomy that working for themselves brings – they do things their way. But accepting help is hard. Especially from big corporates, who pose a significant hazard to them. They need a partner, not a threat.

IKEA’s that partner. They’re well positioned to answer SMEs needs by offering help and aligning their entrepreneurial origins and social mission to a new, likeminded B2B audience.

Idea

Enter the IKEA Business Network. A network of small businesses backed by the ‘big guy’ looking out for them, offering a range of benefits for members that are usually reserved for big corporates and seldom offered to small enterprises.  

The idea centred around one word. Open. It’s an attitude. It’s a mindset. It’s an action. It’s how we opened our doors to small businesses. It’s how we launched the IKEA Business Network to pique attention, drive interest, and have global appeal. 

We targeted different small businesses with creative variants based on their individual sector and subsequent needs. Featuring small business owners from specifically selected high opportunity industries - residential construction, retail, and hospitality.

No matter whether they are new to IKEA or an IKEA superfan, we flexed communications to reflect their existing relationship. We attracted new audiences and encouraged existing small businesses shoppers and Family members over to the IKEA Business Network. Plus, knowing small business owners are busy people we made sure our approach effortlessly fitted around them and mirrored their experience - leading to a fully integrated channel mix consisting of DVOD, Paid Social, In Store POS, Display, eCRM, Web Content & SEM/SEO.

Growth

In a short time, we successfully launched a bespoke small business club in three pilot markets (UK, Japan and Spain), 85+ stores, which to date has over 300,000 members and growing.

Exceeding targets - by 29% in the UK (first 6 months), by 250% in Spain (first 4 months) and by 108% in Japan (first 5 months). Providing support to hundreds of thousands of small businesses. At a time when they needed it most.

Ikea Business 30sec TITLED

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