Ikea Canada has launched a new retail concept for kids called Children’s Ikea, offering parents and caregivers a toy store with a pedagogical bent and merchandise designed to enhance mind, body and spirit.

Up and running across Canada and designed for children aged zero to seven, the new kid-focused sections of the larger Ikea furniture stores stock a range of wares, from baby products designed to help newborns distinguish colors and shapes to toys with a learning component for toddlers.

The products are meant to reinforce the Swedish furniture maker’s economical/innovative positioning by providing furnishings that incorporate adjustable components – a bed, for example, that can be extended a full metre to accommodate growth spurts – at affordable prices. In short, it’s offering toys for growing intellects, furnishings for growing limbs.

‘We want to offer a good pedagogical line of toys and home furnishings that meet the needs of both parents and kids,’ says Goran Nilsson, president of Ikea Canada. ‘And at prices that are low enough that the majority can afford to buy them.’

No ad campaign is planned at present, says Nilsson, and Ikea seems content to build the business slowly, relying on more subtle means to position the new product lines.

Take, for instance, the recent pro bono remodeling of a ymca day-care facility located next door to the Burlington, Ont store. Nilsson says such activities demonstrate Ikea’s commitment to children while at the same time creating associations between the company’s expertise in designing rooms with the ymca’s reputation as a nurturing environment for the spiritual and physical development of children.

‘We have devoted more space in our catalogue this year (for children’s items), but we want to grow with the market,’ says Nilsson. ‘We don’t want to say overnight that, `Hey, we’re now the experts in kids products and environments.’ We’re learning while we’re doing.’

A company-wide shift in emphasis towards kids is evident in other ways too – even in the architecture. The entranceway staircase in the Toronto store, for instance, now has two handrails, one at adult height and a lower one for kids. ‘We’ve been thinking about kids and how we can enhance their total experience of the store,’ Nilsson says.

But social marketing initiatives seem to be the key promotional focus.

Eeva Jalo, Children’s Ikea business-area manager at the Toronto store, says a corporate charity program has been rejigged to focus more strongly on children’s issues as well.

‘The program used to vary from store to store,’ she says. ‘Some stores would support cancer hospitals or other organizations, but it is being reworked this coming year to emphasize helping needy children.’

Jalo says the Toronto store, which was one of the chain’s worldwide pilot locations for the Children’s Ikea concept, supports the Bloorview Children’s Hospital with fundraising activities and has provided furnishings and assistance with refurbishments of play areas – all of which is bound to resonate with parents.

Shrewd as these initiatives are, Ikea is entering a retail sector dominated by some pretty heavy hitters.

Jerry Smith, spokesperson for the Canadian Toy Association and president of Playtoy Industries, says roughly 63% of the $1.3 billion Canadian toy market is controlled by Toys ‘R Us, Wal Mart and Zellers, with Toys ‘R Us in first place and the latter two duking it out for second.

The market is growing – by between 5% and 7% from 1995 to present – but Smith says much of that is attributable to a resurgent interest in video games, an area Ikea has no intention of entering.

‘I think we are competing, basically, with nobody and everybody who is marketing to kids,’ says Nilsson. ‘But we’re not trying to be Toys R’ Us. We want to keep the core of Ikea’s business, which is home furnishings.

‘We have a slightly different approach to our products than some of our competitors. We don’t have anything that evokes any kind of violence. We avoid plastic as much as we can and try to be as naturally oriented (relying on organic construction materials like wood) as we possibly can, because we believe that is important to kids. That’s our value system.’

The success of the strategy really seems to hinge on the age zero-to-seven demographic focus, says Smith.

‘It’s a great age group É in that we have about 350,000 births a year in Canada. The market is consistent and if Ikea is delivering the right product to the consumer, there’s an opportunity for them to garner some market share.’

To merchandise the products, Ikea has created what a company release calls ‘an interactive wonderland’ in each store. A series of play rooms are filled with un-packaged product that the kids can hug, hammer, prod or otherwise ‘test’ – all under Mom and Dad’s watchful eye. Displays are constructed for kids who would rather play than shop, with items merchandised at eye level for kids, aged zero to seven, of average height.

Ikea’s agency is Deutsche, New York.