LATI NUM PROFILE

Above and opposite: The Swedish company has built an

empire based on affordably priced Scandinavian-style
designs. Below: IKEA's June 7 opening in Canton should
be a smooth one, thanks in large part to Joseph Roth.

TR VELING M N

BY KHRISTI ZIMMETH

I

f Joseph Roth had a motto, it might be, "If it's Tuesday, this must be
Canton." The Los Angeles resident, 38, has been spending up to 90 percent
of his time on the road as director of public affairs and new store expansion
for IKEA, the Swedish furniture and housewares giant due to open its doors in
Michigan this month.
"Two weeks ago, we broke ground in Salt Lake City; four weeks ago, I was in
Austin. Three weeks before that, I was in Florida looking at possible sites there.
Next week, I'm in Boston, and this week I'm here," he said during a recent inter-
view at the Canton store.
It's all in a day's work for Roth, whose job includes not only working with
media when a store is opening but working with landowners and community gov-
ernment long before a store breaks ground. An IKEA employee since February
2002, he has grown accustomed to a whirlwind schedule.
"Sometimes, I'll be in two or three cities in the same week," he said. "When
stores are opening, my visits start to get longer. I've been spending a lot of time in
Canton recently," he explained.
He and store manager Mark McCaslin have been working around the clock
tweaking displays, giving tours and making sure each of the up to 10,000 items in
stock at a given moment are in place and ready for the June 7 opening.
Roth is the first to admit that working for IKEA is the last thing he would
have expected after graduating from the University of Southern California with
an undergraduate degree in international relations and political science and from

30 •

JUNE 2006 •

JNPLATINUM

IKEA'S JOSEPH ROTH