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- Ikea just opened a new store on London’s Oxford Street.
- The retailer is opening more city-center locations so shoppers don’t have to visit its big-box stores.
- The store has thousands of items to take home and also has a Swedish deli.
Ikea has opened a new store in the heart of London as part of a drive to expand its presence in city centers.
The Swedish homewares retailer aims to reach more consumers who don’t live near one of its traditional suburban stores.
Its newest store opened last Thursday on Oxford Street, with more than nine million visitors expected a year.
“This is going to be like the crown jewel in Ikea superstores,” Jesper Brodin, CEO of Ikea’s parent company, Ingka Group, told Business Insider in November.
“We learned that a lot of the people who visit us in the big stores on the outskirts of town don’t have cars, and they asked us to bring Ikea closer to them,” he said.
“So we’ve been doing that for seven years, testing and trying, and I think this is going to be the biggest investment and one of the coolest places we have,” he said.
Ikea also has city-center stores in San Francisco and Toronto.
The new store has a capacity of about 2,200 customers.
The new store spans 5,800 square meters (about 62,000 sq ft) over three floors, making it considerably smaller than the average Ikea location, which is about 30,000 square meters.
A “small” store opened three years ago in Hammersmith, west London. Ingka Centres also owns the mall that houses the store.
Tolga Öncü, retail operations manager for Ingka Group, said in a statement: “Adding Oxford Street to the Ikea map is a special moment for us. This store, on one of the busiest and most well-known streets in the world, exemplifies our ambition to innovate our retail presence and bring Ikea to where our customers live, work, and socialise.”
About half the products on show can be taken home
About 6,000 products are on display — 3,500 can be purchased and taken home, while the rest need to be ordered online.
They can either be delivered or collected from an Ikea pick-up point.
All units were curated following home visits.
Ikea’s room displays can be seen throughout the store. There fun twist is that they’ve been co-created with Londoners based on their actual homes.
The spaces can provide inspiration for people ranging from those living in smaller flats to larger houses.
‘Curated shops’ aim to reflect London’s diversity and character.
On the ground floor, there are three “curated shops,” or displays created by Londoners inspired by their own tastes.
Throughout the year, different residents will be invited in to assemble a selection of products.
This one was curated by Carrot, a nonbinary drag artist.
The new store features IKEA’s first live studio.
The Oxford Street store also boasts a studio with broadcasting capabilities.
It mimics “skögen” — the Swedish term for the forest — and allows for interactivity on the screen like drawing. The retailer plans to invite local chefs and designers to host events in the space.
There’s a 130-seater Swedish deli.
Like most Ikea stores, this one also has a Swedish deli.
A number of the store’s classics can be purchased in the store, including hot dogs for 85 pence ($1.13) each as well as meatballs and plant balls.
It also offers some British favorites such as fish and chips.
Customers can scan barcodes as they shop.
Shoppers can purchase goods using the “Scan & Go” function on Ikea’s app that customers scan barcodes as they shopp and then pay quickly at the checkout.
Read the full article here
