Kia unveils ‘Kia Store’ design concept for showrooms

Kia on Thursday unveiled the new design concept for its showrooms, renamed “Kia Stores” to reflect a renewed brand identity and strategy.

Each Kia Store will provide customized service and a varied mobility experience to users, officials said in a release.

The Kia Store model was inspired by the company’s “opposites united” design philosophy, which seeks to embrace opposing concepts and combine them in an integrated design.

To maximize the contrast, every Kia Store will comprise an exhibit zone and an experience zone, each with a different spatial design and color scheme.

The exhibit zone will highlight the vehicles in a wide-open space with an achromatic, metallic look. In the experience zone, customers can make themselves comfortable amid natural warm colors and wooden materials.

The red, loop-shaped lighting system will cut across the two separate spaces and unite them.

“We have come up with this store design standard in order to create a space in which customers and the brand may communicate interactively,” said Artur Martins, global chief brand officer and chief experience officer.

The company also paid close attention to the furniture within the store, introducing a soft premium texture so that customers can feel at ease throughout every moment of the visit, officials added.

In February, the company launched a pilot project and renovated its Dongtan showroom using the new Kia Store model. Recently it decided to progressively expand the model to some 7,000 stores across the nation.

Earlier this year, the Hyundai Motor Group-affiliated carmaker changed its corporate name from Kia Motors to Kia, in a step away from conventional vehicle manufacturing and toward its future as a mobility solution provider.

With a new logo and slogan -- “Movement that inspires” -- Kia announced targets to raise its global electric vehicle market share to 6.6 percent by 2025 and its global annual sales to 500,000 units by 2026.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)