Ikea migrates from warehouse to High Street in sales shift
Swedish furniture retailer Ikea, famed for its giant out of town warehouses, is to trial a series of smaller High Street stores as part of an effort to counter customer criticisms that it is too distant.
As part of the first wave of downsized stores Ikea opened a new outlet in Norwich earlier this month and plans to open a second in Aberdeen in the spring, with openings in Greenwich, Sheffield and Exeter also on the cards.
These shops will be a little over a tenth the size of a standard Ikea outlet although the store is also exploring the possibility of opening a flagship branch on London’s Oxford Street within an existing BHS branch.
Ikea won’t entirely abandon its existing model however, with plans in train to open a traditional warehouse store in Reading in 2016, the first such opening for seven years.
Explaining the shift Gillian Drakeford, head of Ikea in the UK, said: “Customers’ expectations are changing and time and convenience is a lot more important to them. A lot of people don’t have cars and actually getting a Pax wardrobe home on the Tube or a train is quite difficult.”
Ikea posted an 11.3 per cent rise in UK sales to £1.57bn over the past year.