Susan Dickenson

Design Within Reach to expand in SoHo with DWR Flagship Studio; IKEA's first U.S. production facility to open May 21
May 1, 2008

Design Within Reach announced it will open its first DWR Flagship Studio on Friday, May 23, 2008, in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood. The new Studio will occupy the 4,000-sq.-ft. ground floor space of the SoHo Building at 110 Greene Street between Prince and Spring Streets. DWR will close its existing SoHo Studio, at 142 Wooster St., at 7pm on May 22. The company will repurpose the 3,500-sq.-ft. space for a new retail concept to be launched in September, 2008. CEO Ray Brunner said, "Our new flagship Studio places DWR in the heart of the world-renowned SoHo shopping district. This exceptional location, 110 Greene Street, will provide an improved retail layout with a greater selection of our products on display and much higher visibility and foot traffic. Based on these factors, we anticipate improved performance over our existing SoHo Studio, which is already one of the company's top-producing locations."

Built in 1906 as a department store warehouse, and at 13 stories the neighborhood's tallest building before the SoHo Grand Hotel went up in 1996, 110 Greene Street is a landmark building in the SoHo Cast-Iron Historic District. A notable feature of the new flagship will be the subway map embedded in the sidewalk outside the Studio's front door. In 1986, the Belgian artist and architect Francoise Schein created "Subway Map Floating on a New York Sidewalk," consisting of 87 feet of half-inch-wide stainless steel bars with recessed lights indicating subway stops. Inside the Studio, the subway theme will be continued with a large graphic of Massimo Vignelli's iconic, though short-lived, New York City Subway map from 1972. The flagship will also feature fixtures and other wall graphics that have not been used in any existing Design Within Reach Studio.

Swedwood, the industrial group within IKEA, will open its first production location in the U.S. this month. Located in Danville, Virginia, the manufacturing facility will open officially at 10:30 a.m. on  May 21, 2008. The 930,000 square-foot Swedwood factory was built on 209 acres in Cane Creek Centre, a joint industrial park for the City of Danville and Pittsylvania County (approximately 50 miles north of Greensboro, NC). The factory will be the Swedish company’s first furniture production location in the United States, and will produce a variety of wood-based IKEA products such as EXPEDIT bookshelves, LACK coffee and side tables, and BESTÅ modular entertainment systems. By May 21, more than 175 coworkers will have joined the IKEA/Swedwood family. “We made excellent progress on construction last year and our installation of equipment and machinery has gone very smoothly,” said Bengt Danielsson, North American president of Swedwood. “Now our primary objective is to complete appropriate operational training for 175 coworkers as well as to ensure a seamless production and packaging process.”

Founded in 1991 by IKEA as a subsidiary to safeguard itself against the loss of vital suppliers in Europe, Swedwood is an industrial group of companies whose primary function is to manufacture and distribute furniture.Swedwood today has evolved into an IKEA supplier with advanced production facilities of its own, including more than 36 production units in nine countries. There currently are more than 275 IKEA stores in 36 countries, including 34 in the U.S. and 11 in Canada. Other new stores in North America will open in: Brooklyn, NY; Charlotte, NC; Somerville, MA; and Tampa, FL. IKEA also has seven distribution centers in North America, with facilities in: Bristol, PA; Brossard, Quebec; Perryville, MD; Savannah, GA; Tejon, CA; and Westampton, NJ. A northwestern distribution center will open later this year in Tacoma, WA.

Posted by Susan Dickenson on May 1, 2008 | Comments (0)