kikki.K Swedish Home/Office Style

Multi-award winning Swedish designer & stationery entrepreneur Kristina Karlsson has now opened her second Sydney stationery concept boutique kikki.K - Swedish Home/Office Style at Chatswood Chase, creating a unique new retail offer for customers at The Chase.

Karlsson who has two kikki.K concept stores in Melbourne - including one voted Melbourne’s Most Innovative Retail Store just 6 months after opening - commented: *The response to our stores has been overwhelming. There really is something special about beautiful stationery. We’ve had people dancing around our stores in delight.

With Scandinavian design running high in popularity around the world, Swedish born Karlsson, who has been living in Australia for 9 years, couldn’t have timed better the opening of her second Sydney kikki.K concept store. "So many people from Sydney’s north have been asking us to open a store at Chatswood Chase so we’re really excited it’s finally happening" said Karlsson.

According to Emma Adam, Marketing Manager of Chatswood Chase, kikki.K combines unique Swedish design heritage with a practical approach to stationery and storage.

"With the trend towards more people working from home or in a SOHO environment, there is a real need for attractive and well-designed stationery and storage products to complement a busy lifestyle and complement both modern and traditional décor. Many of our customers have home office needs due to work and family requirements, so we are especially excited at Chatswood Chase to be welcoming kikki.K".

According to Karlsson, who started her business at home 6 years ago after not being able to find the fashionable products she wanted to set up her own home office, "I see stationery and the every-day stationery type objects we all use in our working lives as having a purpose beyond their simple function. To me they’re fashion & design accessories that let people create a ‘look’ they love. My vision is to provide gorgeous home & office objects that appeal to people with a sense of style and fashion".

According to author of Shopping Secrets shopping guide, Michelle Matthews, "It’s a world class shop. Shopping Secrets loves discovering shops like kikki.K. It’s really edgy and innovative".

The original development of kikki.K came in response to a growing nationwide trend in the number of people working from home. It is the first business of it’s kind in Australia to focus totally on the needs of people wanting to create organized & productive workspaces at home - with a touch of contemporary style & fashion. According to Karlsson, "So many people these days have home workspaces that have just ‘evolved’ around the family computer, which has made setting-up an effective and inspiring home office an increasingly common project". But Karlsson adds, "all too often, workspaces in the family home just develop as ‘busy areas’, complete with energy sapping piles of paper, bills, magazines and other clutter, and a ‘corporate’ look that doesn’t quite fit the personal style of a home".

Inspired by the clean lines, order and simplicity of Swedish design, the majority of the kikki.K range is actually hand crafted in Australia, and according to Kristina "we want to continue supporting quality Australian manufacturers".

Text Box: news release About what inspired her to found kikki.K, Kristina says: "I just couldn’t find a collection of stationery products anywhere that I needed to turn my home office into the orderly and inspiring space I wanted to create. I didn’t want it to look like just another boring office. I wanted my workspace to blend with the rest of my home, and be a reflection of my personality and my ideas on fashion & design".

The new kikki.K concept store at Chatswood Chase will present a range of every-day-use home and office objects with an inspiring contemporary fashion edge, including color co-ordinated storage boxes, notebooks, pencil cases, mouse mats & folders, along with beautifully designed Lamy Pens and home office accessories like tape dispensers & staplers from designers around the world. The kikki.K store is also home to a Mandarina Duck concept area brimming with gorgeous work bags, satchels, wallets, purses and watches from the high profile European design brand.

In Kristina’s words, "We’ve set out to present a collection of beautiful and functional home and office objects in a really unique way. Our aim is to inspire and make it easy for people to create enlivening work environments that really blend with their style, to help bring that fantastic feeling of well-being that comes with being organised and in-control".

The new store also presents photo albums and an inspiringly colorful collection of specialty paper & envelopes - in unique shapes and sizes - which are an ideal alternative to e-mail when it comes to personalised communication like invitations, letters and thank-you notes for someone special.

kikki.K - Swedish Home/Office Style is located on the Top Level at Chatswood Chase . Prices range from $1.50 for a groovy eraser to $29.95 for a CD storage box, $400 for a Mondaine Wall Clock from Switzerland and $1,050 for an Arne Jacobsen wall clock.

Since founding kikki.K at home Kristina has received the following recognition:

2003 Women Chiefs of Enterprise International - Young Entrepreneur Award (Kristina)

2003 Telstra Business Woman’s Awards (Kristina a state finalist in two categories)

2002 Lord Mayor’s Award for Retail Innovation (Melbourne Central store)

2002 Victorian Small Retailer of the Year (Melbourne Central store)

2002 MyBusiness Magazine ‘Young Gun’ Award for Business Achievement (Kristina)

2002 Telstra Business Woman’s Awards (Kristina a state finalist)

2002 MyBusiness Magazine e-Business Excellence (www.kikki-k.com.au a finalist)

2002 Inside Interior Review Magazine IDEA Awards for Product Design (nomination)

2001 Channel Nine Small Business Show Australian Business Website of the Year

Kristina is just back from a trip to Sweden, London & Paris where she sold her latest range of delicious stationery into premium stores including Selfridges.

Kikki.K competition giveaway: www.femail.com.au/comp-kikki-k-spring-clean-up-packs.htm