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This is an interesting move, a design/manufacturing/retail company buying a labor marketplace company. Ikea has grown a ton based on having widely appealing pr
by shimon 9y ago
This is an interesting move, a design/manufacturing/retail company buying a labor marketplace company.
Ikea has grown a ton based on having widely appealing products at extremely low prices. Their growth over the past decade has been driven by expanding their physical retail presence on the one-giant-store-per-city model. The store build-out on this model may be done, at least in the US. Still, many potential buyers aren't willing to make the pilgrimage to Ikea because it's far, or simply because you can get an OK entertainment center at Target instead.
Key to Ikea's brand is the memorable in-store experience. If they can match that in their in-home shopping apps and in delivery/assembly/install services, they could grow significantly. If they believe this, expect them to leverage TaskRabbit not just to streamline delivery/install but to offer new Ikea-branded services. A few ideas:
* New apartment? Use our app to pick and place furniture, our designers to get advice, and our people to deliver and install everything.
* Remodel mockup services. Not sure how your kitchen layout will look? Have us block things out using cardboard boxes to you can walk through and feel it out.
* Organization & storage. Have someone go through your basement and inventory everything. Use our app to route each item to donation, resale, or storage. Once stored, app helps you find an item whether it's in your basement (shelf 3, bay 12) or retrievable by delivery-on-request.
- TylerE 9y ago> The store build-out on this model may be done, at least in the US. It most definitely is NOT. For instance the nearest Ikea to the Raleigh/Triangle area is over 2 hours away. There are 24 US states without a single Ikea store.
- jessriedel 9y agoIt may be that they have mostly saturated in the markets where they think they are competitive.
- shimon 9y agoPerhaps. A lot of this boils down to the question of why they're expanding now and not sooner. Ikea stores are big investments and when they started rapidly expanding in the US they may not have had confidence in the long-term profitability of each store, including reliance on the housing market and taste-driven desirability of Ikea products. (What if Americans only saw Swedish furniture as a short-lived fad?) Maybe now it's clear Ikea has a long-standing place in American retail, so in addition to expanding the giant-store footprint they want to invest in other forms of access.
- flachsechs 9y agoi doubt it. i think america is just huge, and that they can't responsibly expand too fast. remember, ikea is expanding globally. on my last vacation, i saw an ikea identical to the one by my house in california, in southern germany. that's really sort of unprecedented at the scale of an ikea store.
- kalleboo 9y ago> remember, ikea is expanding globally And they're expanding mainly with their own money. They're a family-owned company without outside investors. Ingvar Kamprad is pretty economically conservative.
- bpicolo 9y agoIkea wants 2 million people within 60 miles of a store, apparently, though they've started experimenting with smaller stores in smaller markets. http://blog.syracuse.com/at-home/2009/11/no_ikea_here_not_ever_store_sa.html http://blog.syracuse.com/at-home/2009/11/no_ikea_here_not_ev...
- niftich 9y agoThey have recently began a large wave of expansion [1] in the US. Raleigh (Cary) is getting one soon. So is Norfolk, Nashville, Jacksonville, Columbus OH, Milwaukee; they're also beginning to build second (or additional) locations in large metros like Chicago, DFW, Phoenix. [1] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/about_ikea/newsroom/expansion_plans http://www.ikea.com/us/en/about_ikea/newsroom/expansion_plan...
- ghaff 9y agoThey were trying to add a second store in the Boston area for a long time but they finally gave up on trying to get one into Somerville. (There was a lot of local opposition--mostly because of traffic concerns as I recall.) AFAIK, there's no current plan to add another store. The existing one is a fair ways south of the city.
- emodendroket 9y agoI don't see how they could build something anywhere near as large as that store in Somerville anyway.
- ghaff 9y agoThe Assembly Square project. But I think the traffic concerns were probably legit. G
- jtuente 9y agoThe one is Columbus is already open.
- dmix 9y agoI hope they try more innovative stuff in their new stores. Such as making self-checkout the primary means instead of the alternative. The long lines are often a problem and a single row of the checkout machines has 4-6 machines vs 1 or 2 people run counters. So it would speed things up They could even extend it to offer more services like ordering delivery and install services. It also makes a lot of sense in their current system.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ErrantX 9y agoI suspect the ambition is less lofty. They know people use TR regularly to deliver and install Ikea furniture and they figure on taking a slice.
- dilemma 9y ago>Their growth over the past decade has been driven by expanding their physical retail presence on the one-giant-store-per-city model. > If they can match that in their in-home shopping apps and in delivery/assembly/install services, they could grow significantly. If they believe this, expect them to leverage TaskRabbit not just to streamline delivery/install but to offer new Ikea-branded services. Are you aware that IKEA is a multinational company founded in 1943 and the world's largest furniture retailer, and not an SV startup?
- kuschku 9y ago> Their growth over the past decade has been driven by expanding their physical retail presence on the one-giant-store-per-city model. One? Hamburg (1.5mio ppl) alone has 3, plus several more within of 1h driving distance.
- Cyph0n 9y agoI think the parent comment was referring to how IKEA operates in the US.