Store gallery: Stationery retailer Kikki.K makes UK debut in London's Covent Garden

Kikki.K is a Swedish designer stationery brand with global ambitions. Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, the retailer has 82 stores internationally, of which the great majority are in Australia and New Zealand. And now it has arrived in the UK.

The newest store in the Kikki.K empire faces the piazza in London’s Covent Garden. It is a temporary shop, measuring 1,700 sq ft and will trade for the next five months.

A smaller, permanent, store just around the corner on James Street, will also welcome shoppers soon.

But for the majority of shoppers wandering into Covent Garden, it will probably be the former branch that does the talking.

Swedish design

This upscale pop-up is located in one of a series of units that have curved, black-framed windows.

Outsize models of white pencils bearing the Kikki.K logo fill the right-hand window with a tasteful strapline, picked out in a quiet font, stating: ‘Swedish design, delicious stationery,  gorgeous gifts’. And according to co-founders Kristina Karlsson and her partner Paul Lacy, this is what the store is all about.

The left-hand window is dominated by larger words: ‘Hej London, lovely to meet you’. For the few who might not have watched Scandinavian TV drama The Bridge, an explanation beneath this clarifies that ‘Hej’ is Swedish for ‘hello’.

Both windows afford the onlooker views deep into the softly lit interior of the shop. Walking through the door, the initial impression might be of collaboration between Muji and Ikea, with simple plywood fixtures making the products the centre of attraction.

There is a lot more to the store than this, however. Just inside the entrance, on the left-hand wall, there are a series of naive cartoon-like drawings, and images and animations are projected on to the scenes depicted.

Lacy says that he and Karlsson were inspired by a recent Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition in which moving faces were projected on to mannequins and this formed part of the brief they gave to design consultancy Dalziel & Pow, which designed the shop.

Spreading the message

In store, the plywood wall on to which these animations are projected aims to tell “the story of Kikki.K”, as Lacy puts it.

To the right of this, there are a series of short glass columns with the top of each being used as a display cabinet for selected products.

“There is a lightness of touch about what has been done that is reflected in the products on display”

John Ryan

There is a lightness of touch about what has been done that is reflected in the products that are on display. Just beyond the glass columns, there is a table with display plinths of various heights and on each there is a journal with titles that range from ‘Mindfulness’ to ‘Happiness’ and the ‘1001 Dreams Journal’.

There is something almost new age about this and Lacy says that spreading the Kikki.K message in this way has been affected through social media too.

As well as the website, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest have been outlets for the brand. Venture on to YouTube and there are even videos of excited fans showing how to use one of the journals.

More than 85% of Kikki.K’s customers are women and Lacy says the typical shopper is female, between 20 and 50. Male shoppers tend to be “designers, architects and people like that,” he observes.

Glance towards the back of the shop, beyond more tables bearing stationery and gifts and a winsome paper mobile overhead, and there is the long cash desk. On the wall behind this is another message: ‘Dream. Do. Enjoy. Share.’

Karlsson says this is what her vision for the retailer was when she created Kikki.K and judging by the number of shoppers queuing up to buy something from the tills, the message is not falling on deaf ears.

Brand story

This, then, is a Swedish lifestyle brand that emanates from Australia and which is now in the UK. But does this polyglot formula equate to something that will find a ready audience in physical shops around the world?

“We’re now selling to customers in 140 countries, which has to be about 70% of all countries,” says Lacy.

“We’re entrepreneurs and there are challenges every day. Our systems were set up to be global”

Paul Lacy, Kikki.K

Karlsson adds that her dream has always been to take the Kikki.K offer to her favourite cities and Covent Garden works well because “so many languages are spoken by our customers in this store”. The Covent Garden store is therefore intended to act as a billboard, as much as a selling entity.

Lacy observes that there are about 80% of the SKUs that you would normally find in a Kikki.K store and that this means more room to move and makes it easier for the brand story to be told.

At 1,200 sq ft, the store on James Street is smaller, but the format is similar. The obvious question therefore is where next?

Lacy says that they are actively looking for a site in New York and that they are in talks with malls around London including the Westfield centres and Bluewater. He adds: “At some point we’d love to move out and open stores in cities like Leeds and Manchester.”

All of which means that Kikki.K’s customer face may be distinctly new age, but it is nonetheless an outfit that has a very strong commercial undercurrent.

On the matter of the logistical challenges of operating stores from a Melbourne base, he is phlegmatic: “We’re entrepreneurs and there are challenges every day. Our systems were set up to be global.”

A 10-year lease has been taken on the James Street store and it is quite hard to see how this one will not succeed (although the price architecture might need a little consideration… this is not a cheap proposition) as it really does have its own niche and there is nothing that is entirely the same – even Paperchase.