“Now we are seeing more retailers offering this perk.” “In the past, design services were mostly accessible to those that could afford them,” said Marisa Ortega, retail analyst at the research firm Mintel. Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images Those new plan and order locations could also be a draw.Ĭustomers at an Ikea planning store in Long Beach, California. At this economic moment, “I can see concepts that are pointed … towards a lower-income consumer having tons of runway,” he said. When food inflation soared, so did Aldi’s sales. That’s similar to the trade people are willing to make to shop at Aldi, a no-frills budget supermarket which is largely stocked with store brands and where items are stacked in cartons. But, “they’re at the low end, and they may be able to pick up some share from people who are trading down.”Īt a place like Ikea, people may now be willing to trade their time and their energy for the lower price, noted Zimmermann. “I don’t think that this is what would have picked in an ideal state,” said Sucharita Kodali, principal analyst at Forrester, a research and consulting firm, referring to the difficult housing market and consumers slashing spending in the space. A retailer like Ikea “could absolutely benefit from a period like this, where people are pulling back from bigger expenditures and doing smaller, more incremental moves to solve their needs,” he said. But for some customers, a temporary option could be just the thing. Plus, some of the things that people consider negative about Ikea could turn into positives.Īt “low-cost discretionary retailers… products often feel very temporary and almost disposable for people,” said Karl Zimmermann, a partner at the consulting firm Bain with expertise in retail. “We see endless opportunities to grow” in the US, Tolga Öncü, head of Ikea Retail for the Ingka Group, Ikea’s Dutch holding company, said in a statement at the time.īy charging ahead now, while home-ownership and renovations are out of reach for budget-conscious Americans, Ikea can reach more people who may be in the market for their products, and possibly hold onto those customers in the future. It also wants to improve delivery and to open 900 new order pick-up locations. Over the next three years, it plans to open eight large stores and nine smaller “plan and order points,” where customers can chat with design consultants and order products. In fact, the chain announced a $2.2 billion investment in the US market in April, its largest-ever investment in the country.
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