Latest news with #IngkaGroup
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Irish unit of Ikea's Ingka parent group pays €1.1bn in dividends over past two years
Irish firm manages €15bn in debt securities and equities for the group Today at 21:30 An Irish finance unit of the group behind global retail giant Ikea has paid €1.1bn in dividends to its parent group over the past two years. Ingka Investments Financial Assets Ireland manages part of the liquidity of the Dutch-based Ingka Group by trading in equities, securities and other instruments.
ABC News
6 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
How IKEA is tackling Trump's tariff tirade
The global trading system is going through one of its most tumultuous periods in recent history as President Donald Trump continues his tariff regime. Less than 48 hours after he announced a 50 per cent tariff on European countries, President Trump paused it, to give more time for trade negotiations. So how are international companies navigating this uncertainty and what will it mean for global supply chains? GUEST: Karen Pflug, Chief Sustainability Officer, Ingka Group, IKEA franchisee
Business Insider
06-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
Ikea is going big on city-center stores. Take a look inside its new location in the heart of London.
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 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.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ikea's new central London store has learned from ‘a lot of mistakes' over 7 years—but it's confident its inner-city debut will click with shoppers
When you enter Ikea's freshly opened Oxford Street store, two things instantly meet your eye: a display of the company's newest furniture line and some very bright colors. The long-awaited store, which looked like a mega blue Frakta bag when in the works and was initially slated to open in 2023, finally welcomed shoppers on Thursday. It's not a common sight for an Ikea store to be smack in the middle of the city, and in a location that's Europe's most popular shopping destination, receiving a whopping 30 million yearly visitors. But Ikea knows what it's up against and has tweaked its city store format to account for its location. The store features new concepts, like a 25 sq. m. live studio and colorful curated collections by Londoners. It also boasts a souvenir section by the entrance to attract fast-footed tourists. The marketplace section, keeping affordability front and center, offers a range of kitchen items for £3 and under. 'We have been on to this for the last seven years, and we have [made] a lot of mistakes when designing city location stores,' Tolga Öncü, Ingka Group's Retail Manager (COO) at IKEA Retail, told Fortune in an interview following the store opening. He gave the example of IKEA's Paris store, where they did away with its serpentine store format, thinking people would want to pop in and out without necessarily exploring all sections. But Parisians preferred the original format. Formerly the Topshop flagship store, the new Ikea boasts a range of 3,500 products on display, with another 2,500 available for pick-up. Given the busy neighborhood and tricky parking availability compared to some suburban locations, Ikea will limit the size and type of furniture people can collect or buy in Oxford Street. 'We have also learned over the last seven years which category of products people are more eager to bring home from the city location,' Öncü said, adding that small accessories were popular, while people were willing to wait a few days for sofas to ship to their homes. Ikea may have had to make different choices for furniture at its Oxford Street store, but its 130-seater Swedish deli, featuring meatballs and hot dogs, will be present in all its glory. Öncü pointed out one design tweak key to this location—food will only be served in takeaway boxes to account for people working in the area who might want to grab a quick, low-cost meal. The company has other city-center stores in Stockholm and Mumbai. It's also no stranger to London, having opened its Hammersmith store in west London in 2022 and a standalone restaurant next to it last year. This foray offered hints into what Londoners are looking for as the cost of living continues to stretch their wallets. One of British retailers' biggest concerns in recent years is the uptick in shoplifting, which costs them £2 billion a year according to the British Retail Consortium. Ikea said that while it has stationed a security team across the store and made the checkouts clear to mitigate the risk of theft, it also wants to make sure it appears welcoming to shoppers. The mostly underground Ikea store might struggle with queues as it has only a handful of tills two floors below the street level. However, Ikea said it plans to introduce a scan-and-pay system whereby customers can skip the checkout counters by simply scanning to purchase an item. In a bid to make the area more suitable for shopping, Ikea's U.K. chief Peter Jekelby has backed Mayor Sadiq Khan's bid to pedestrianize Oxford Street. Khan has advocated for this to boost the strip following the crop of shops selling U.S. candy and the pandemic's impact on general business in the area. The Westminster Council has opposed Khan's plan due to disability access and public transport disruption. Khan said Ikea's big debut is 'a huge vote of confidence in London, in our economy and in our plans to rejuvenate Oxford Street and unlock its true potential.' Öncü said the upside of a pedestrianized Oxford Street is that shoppers will be more at ease, especially if they accompany children. 'As a retail concept, the more relaxed our visitors are, the more time they will spend, the more time they spend, the more time we have to do business,' he said. The Ikea store, which was led by Ingka Group's investment arm, will mark a new spurt of U.K. stores to follow in Brighton and Norwich. This story was originally featured on
France 24
01-05-2025
- Business
- France 24
IKEA opens new London city centre store
The Oxford Street outlet has been seven years in the making and is part of the retailer's strategy of bringing the global brand closer to city centres. Tolga Oncu, retail manager at Ingka Group, the holding company which controls most of IKEA's stores, said they were encouraged by the "urban formats". Others already exist in places such as Paris, Stockholm, Vienna and Tokyo. "We know the fact that when we are physically present, not only our physical retail improves but also our digital retail improves," said Oncu. The 4,600-square-metre (nearly 50,000 square-feet) store is housed in the former Topshop building, which the company bought in 2021 for £378 million ($503 million). Hundreds of people thronged the aisles on Thursday to deafening music by a DJ, with attendance boosted by unusually summery temperatures in the British capital. Some shoppers held Swedish and UK flags as they posed for photos with a giant meatball, as others browsed the store, which it is hoped will help regenerate Oxford Street after the closure of several big-name outlets. With total sales of 45 billion euros ($51 billion), Ikea, founded in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, is keeping its focus on physical stores despite the boom in online shopping. In 2023-24, online accounted for 26 percent of the company's turnover compared to just seven percent five years ago. The UK is IKEA's fourth-biggest market, behind Germany, the United States and France. Oncu said Brexit -- Britain's tortuous departure from the European Union in 2020 -- "hasn't made a difference" but said the company was "closely monitoring" the trade war launched by US President Donald Trump. "We have a global footprint where a lot of our production comes from Europe," he said. "Then, of course, like everyone else, we are also looking for opportunities across the world." IKEA has been looking at more local production for a number of years, particularly in the United States, notably to avoid exporting bulky items from Europe, he added. "Depending on what the conclusions will be, we will have to look at (whether) we are still having a set-up that is the best for us to keep our prices as low as possible," he said.
