Many Russians love IKEA for inspiring and relevant design solutions that they can get for free in the physical stores. And that’s what makes IKEA distinctive in the tough competitive environment.

But 80% of the consumers don’t have access to it as IKEA has its stores only in 12 Russian cities out of 1117. 60% of them continue to live in typical houses designed for convenience rather than comfort, not knowing how to fix it since they don’t have an opportunity to find free solutions adapted to their lifestyles and flats’ specifics.

IKEA aimed to unlock growth potential by expanding reach beyond the existing customer base concentrated around the physical stores. We were looking for an idea to respond to customers’ tension, therefore, to attract new visitors to IKEA online store (2mln), grow total sales by 13%, and increase average spend by inspiring people to buy solutions for whole flats.

We saw an opportunity to offer millions of Russians free interior designs which are tailored to their standardized apartments and different household needs and could be purchased in one click.

For that, we've created a new touchpoint to interact with the brand — Apartmenteka. It is an online library of free interior designs created for real people living the reality of standardized housing. We inspired them to fall in love with their homes again with make-over ideas for their whole apartment and individual rooms. We showed people how to make most of their small-space and uncomfortable layout, and made it all easily obtainable with just one click of a button by linking Apartmenteka with the main e-com website.

IKEA targets 25-50yo standard housing residents looking for ideas to re-decorate and re-furnish their flat to make their living space beautiful, functional, and 100% fit for the typical layout.

We offer them a convenient solution and new brand experience. Instead of shopping for individual furniture items and wondering how they would fit together in their apartment, shoppers could find inspiration in a design created specifically for their apartment's type, size & layout and easily buy a bundled offer or its components.

To make it happen we analyzed the housing market and identified 231 series of typical houses in Russia. There is no single database of houses in Russia, so all the analytical work — collecting, combining, and classifying the information from different sources — was done by hand. We used it to create designs and matched the data with addresses to provide a convenient and relevant user experience.

We chose 21 most common series of houses out of 231.

IKEA designers took the actual flat layouts and created design options that are tailored for different audience segments due to IKEA's 20 years' experience in understanding Russian customer needs. We tied each design to the addresses of the houses containing these layouts, making sure people can find their apartment by address, type of house & number of rooms, and choose a design solution. On the website, you can walk around your transformed apartment and see how it works. You can buy any item or furnish the whole apartment with just one click.

We created 176 design projects covering 3mln apartments and relevant to 8mln people. The launch was supported with PR and digital banners. Since then, we continually add new house series and new designs to the project.

• By 2021 we created 176 design projects covering 3mln apartments and 8mln people. The service continues to grow, as we include more house series and more design projects in the database.

• 2 761 967 new visitors came to IKEA online store and the new service landing page during the first half of a year since its launch.

• 11:55 minutes was the average time spent on Apartmenteka pages, which is 4 longer vs. ikea.ru.

• Thanks to the Apartmenteka project the average cost of purchase became 1400 rubles higher (up to 20 500 rubles per one purchase) (+7.3%).

• Total sales increased by 17% (vs. 13% planned) during 2019.

Plus:

• WARC has included Apartmenteka in the top 100 most efficient projects in the world for 2020.

• Total media reach was over 78.2mln impressions, including free media from the sources like Bloomberg.

In the 1950s, millions of Russians were migrating from village to city, which caused a shortage of accommodation.

Series of standardized houses were developed as a ‘quick fix’ to the volume problem without much consideration for residents’ comfort. According to the Russian Federal Statistics Service data, today 80mln people still live in those types of houses, struggling to effectively use the space, make it beautiful, cozy and personalized. Hiring a designer is unaffordable for most Russians. Looking for better solutions, Russians use the internet where ideas are often detached from the reality of how people live.