Fans of mazes made up of minimalistic furniture and Swedish meatballs in the capital rejoice: soon you might not have to drive all the way to Tangerang to shop at IKEA.
Governor Anies Baswedan today met with Swedish Ambassador Johanna Brismar Skoog and IKEA Indonesia Director Patrick Lindvall at City Hall. And when a governor meets with representatives of huge corporations, you know they’re discussing business.
True enough, after the meeting, Anies strongly hinted that IKEA would be opening up a store in Jakarta.
“The Swedish ambassador came to meet me first, they conveyed their investment plans to build [an IKEA] facility in Cakung (East Jakarta),” Anies said today, as quoted by Tribun.
Anies says he welcomes the plan, as IKEA could produce a lot of jobs in the capital.
“We’ll make sure that the employees are from Indonesia, particularly Jakarta. During construction they’ll need 1,400 workers, and when they’re operating they’ll need 400 employees,” he said.
The plan seems to still be in its infancy as no timeframe was given as for when IKEA Cakung would be built and open to the public.
IKEA opened its first Indonesian store in Alam Sutra, Tangerang in 2014. Soon after, the furniture store became embroiled in a trademark controversy over the IKEA name after a local company had acquired rights to it. While a district court and eventually the Supreme Court ordered the original IKEA to stop using its own name, the Swedish company claimed to have re-registered the trademark for their name in 2014 and has been using it since.
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