Concepts for living spaces

2021/07/21   |   Bangkok   |   Thailand

Anyone flying to Bangkok will usually land at Don Mueang International Airport. Nearly 38 million domestic and foreign passengers passed through this hub in 2017. Passengers often spend the time they have before departure in one of the many shopping facilities at the airport. One of these is the concept store “Sky Living by Index Living Mall.” Furniture, furnishings and accessories are presented here for visitors to touch over a sales area of 400 m². By presenting concepts for living spaces, Index Living Mall – the operator – aims to create an immediate customer experience. Visitors can then place their orders in the store to have the selected items delivered to their preferred address by a service team.

Leading position in Southeast Asia

Sky Living is just one of the many outlets currently operated by the Bangkok-based furniture manufacturer and retailer. Since Index Living Mall opened its first branch in the Future Park Rangsit in a suburb of Bangkok in 2002, the network has been expanded to more than 30 locations throughout Thailand to date. Now the company is also has shopping centers in vacation resorts such as Chiang Mai, Udon Thani, Khon Kaen, Hat Yai and Phuket. Furniture, furnishings and decorative items, all the way up to complete furnishing solutions are offered here. Cabinets, shelves and tables are on offer, alongside chairs, sofas and beds, but there are also kitchen utensils and electrical appliances, for example for preparing meals. In all of this, direct-to-customer business is integrated into an overall business model that also includes customers from the retail and project business.

For years, the national growth strategy from Index Living Mall has also been linked to the aim of opening at least one business annually in a new ASEAN market. The aim is to steadily increase the share of sales accounted for by countries such as Brunei, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, the Philippines and Singapore and to make Index Living Mall the number one brand in Southeast Asia. As a result, the company has opened furniture stores in Malaysia and Vietnam: For example in Malaysia, at the IOI City Mall in Putrajaya, the Aeon Mall in Shah Alam or the Aeon Mall in Kota Bahru. Customers can find another Index Living Mall store in Johor Bahru. In Vietnam, the furniture and furnishings specialist commissioned a local franchisee to expand its retail network. A first Index Living Mall then opened at Vincom Mega Mall in Ho Chi Minh City, followed by a second at Vincom Mega Mall in Hanoi. Further agreements have also been concluded with a joint venture partner in the Philippines and a franchisee in Indonesia. In addition to these sites, the company’s network now includes locations in India, Indonesia, Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Russia. Results of a growth strategy that has enabled Index Living Mall to regularly realize sales growth of ten percent and more in recent years.

Faster, more precise, more cost-effective

From production to sales, the company now employs around 5000 people and the monthly production capacity is around 1,200,000 components. Solutions from HOMAG help to make this performance possible. A new production line, in operation since 2019, together with the Configurator3D software solution and the production control system, paved the way for the quantity 1 production favored by Index Living Mall. Production that often had to be manual and time-consuming is now carried out with automatic precision. At the beginning of the line, a storage system takes care of the panel organization. This is where the material is stored, sorted and placed in order on the two panel dividing saws that are integrated into the storehouse with a panel labeling system. Once they have been cut, the part stacks are transported for edging, where two edge banding machines that have been set up as a tandem line take on the processing. Once the components are finished, they move on to CNC processing. Here, component-specific drilling, milling and grooving is carried out on three parallel machining centers in order to finally sort the completely processed parts into trolleys. Organized in this way as batch size 1 production, HOMAG technology creates decisive advantages for Index Living Mall. As things stand today, production runs much faster, more precisely and more cost-effectively, according to the specialist for furniture, furnishings and decorative objects.

Strategic potential

The results of this production can be seen by any air traveler today at the concept store Sky Living in Bangkok – the first Thai store for furniture, furnishings and accessoriesin an airport. The commitment shown here is an expression of Index Living Mall’s commitment to promoting the retail trade of furniture and decorative items, even in what might seem unusual locations. However, this commitment can certainly be seen as strategic. After all, passenger arrivals at Don Mueang Airport have increased a huge amount in recent years, especially at Terminal 2, where Sky Living invites a whole host of potential visitors to linger.