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Your eyes are not playing tricks on you: For the first time in Singapore, the Ikea catalogue is now available in Chinese.
Other Mandarin-speaking markets such as Taiwan and China also have a Chinese catalogue.
Of the new Chinese edition, an Ikea spokesman says: 'Ikea would like to extend our reach to include the Chinese who are not English literate.'
The 2010 catalogue was also launched recently in English. Both the 376-page English and Chinese editions feature the same 2,000 items but the product descriptions and home decoration tips are in different languages.
The spokesman adds: 'Chinese readers will not only be inspired by the images but, at the same time, they'll be able to benefit from all these additional information in Chinese.'
Some 40,000 copies of the Chinese catalogue have been printed and distributed free since Sunday at the Tampines and Alexandra stores.
In contrast, 1.235 million copies of the English catalogue, including customers' reference copies in the stores, have been printed this year. Copies of the English catalogue have been distributed to homes in Singapore since Aug 1.
Ikea says it is still too soon to say how well shoppers have taken to the Chinese catalogue.
The spokesman adds that the company will 'most probably' print Chinese editions of future catalogues, 'but we will monitor the response and popularity of this year's issue'.
The catalogue will not be available in Malay or Tamil, though, as 'English literacy among the Malay and Tamil is pretty high', says the spokesman.
Ikea fan Michael Lee, 39, picked up a copy of the Chinese catalogue at the Tampines store on Monday.
'I don't usually read
Chinese, but this will be a collector's item,' he says. Tay Suan
Chiang
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