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Visualisation of the expansion of IKEA
- fauria 13y agoComment from a Galant table, sitting on a Markus chair.
- arrrg 13y agoI really didn’t know that Germany was and still is such an important market for IKEA. It’s the country with the most stores (eight more than the US, but Germany has less than a third of the inhabitants of the US and is much more densely populated). It looks like some smaller European countries might have a higher store per person count (Netherlands, for example), but of all the larger countries Germany has the most stores. I wonder why IKEA expanded into Germany early and hasn’t lost steam since.
- naterator 13y agoWhat surprised me more was that the Canary Islands was one of the first markets for IKEA (before 1985). I mean, the Canary Islands before Madrid or New York? WTF? I can only assume they were using as a test market, like Kansas City for Google Fiber, but still... wow!
- kalleboo 13y agoA lot of IKEAs early international expansion was franchisees, so it's probably more a question of someone there was interested in starting a franchise than that IKEA made a conscious decision that it was a market they were interested in.
- rickisen 13y agoWell there are a lot of swedish stuff in the Canry islands. It's probably the number one holiday spot for Swedes. Or at least it was back then. Just walking down the beach there you'll hear swedish everywhere. And there are plenty of swedes who owns a house there...
- hjnilsson 13y agoIngvar Kamprad (the founder) is of German descent (his grandparents were german) so it is quite natural for him to expand to that market after Scandinavia, also being the largest economy of Europe doesn't hurt.
- pfalke 13y agoNo other big box brand ever gained signifacant market share in Germany besides IKEA. As competition is low, it's natural for IKEA to continue saturating the market. They are even building stores in city centers now, e.g. in Hamburg.
- omnibrain 13y agoGermans like it cheap. And Ikea generally seems to offer a better quality than other cheap furniture chains. It's of course not only that germans prefer to pay less, but also that while germany is economically doing well a broad percentage of people had only little real wage increase in the last 10 to 15 years.
- edemay 13y agoAlso: Culturally speaking, Germans have (like the Dutch), always valued good product design. There's a nice cultural fit between IKEA (economical, good design) and the german market.
- crussmann 13y agoVery surprising how long it took them to enter the U.S. market, especially given that they were in North America (Canada) long before. It'd be interesting to know more about how that decision was made, and also if this has shaped the general perception of Ikea in Canada vs. The States.
- calgoo 13y agoFrom what i remember, there was issues with Imports to the USA. At least thats what I remember...
- madeofpalk 13y agoI was surprised to see Sydney, Australia as one of the first international stores.
- nisse72 13y agoAnd 40 years later, still no IKEA in New Zealand.
- smackfu 13y agoMaybe Canada was a trial for the US market.
- rwhitman 13y agoI attended the grand opening of the first Ikea in the USA in Plymouth Meeting PA as a little kid. (The chart says Conshohocken, thats actually a new store they opened recently) Because my mom is British she knew what it was already and was geeking out but nobody else seemed as excited. I was really young but I kind of remember the opening being a pretty lavish affair without many people in attendance.
- omnibrain 13y agoIt would be nice if one could click on one of the dots and the site showed what store it is. (I'm using Chrome 33, if that's supposed to work)
- croisillon 13y agoI agree, I'm on Firefox and wanted to check some locations by clicking/hovering it and it only says "store".
- tonypace 13y agoIt's missing the only two locations I've ever been to: one closed (Halifax) and one just opened (Taichung). Given that no dots disappeared, I suspect there were other closures that aren't shown.
- 300zxkyle 13y agoI was wondering where the Halifax one was, I distinctly remember being there as a child. Ballpit!
- mrweasel 13y agoThere's another one that's a little funny. Ikea opened in Aalborg Denmark in the 80s and closed again in the 90s. That store isn't shown, it's only the reopening in 2008 that's listed. My point is: "Ikea stores fails too"
- mjs 13y agoClosed stores do seem to be missing. There were several that were around (~1985 - ~1995) in Victoria, Australia that are not listed. Semi-citation for one: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070130193406AAbRb8D https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200701301934... (Think the dates are wrong.)
- wf 13y agoYou can add Kansas City to your visualization in 2014!
- jackalope 13y agoIt frustrates me that even as they expand, they seem to have a distribution model that is one-way-only. If your local store doesn't have an item, you can locate the stores that have it, but they won't send it to the store nearest you. You can order items online, but you can't pick them up at a local store to save on the outrageously high shipping fees. This is even more frustrating when the item is unavailable online, but is sitting in another store 200 miles away. Can't they toss it on a truck for redistribution?
- cpwright 13y agoThe stores are franchises, so it makes sense that they won't ship it from store to store. I can even sort of see why they might not want to ship a single item to a store; given that they might want to batch these things up and skip the middle step of a distribution center. I think they should probably at least try to figure out site-to-store or equivalent if they want to expand their online presence (maybe there isn't enough profit in it if they have to put up with distribution inefficiencies).
- filvdg 13y agoWhy no stores in South America ? import restrictions?
- Htsthbjig 13y agoI suppose it is because 2 facts: 1- Bigger than 100% import duties on some of those countries. 2- Very small middle class, who are the buyers of IKEA. I have lived in Brazil. Only two classes there: The ultra wealthy and the poor. I was ultra wealthy there, but live is worth nothing there. Probably Chile(too far), and in the future Colombia are the only places they could expand.
- pacofvf 13y agoIKEA should come to Mexico, furniture is really expensive here or low quality, if you want to save money and want quality you have to drive kms away to a carpenter town.
- emilioolivares 13y agoTotally agree, we've had to deal with such crappy expensive furniture for too long! Saludos.
- fmela 13y agoThat sounds like it would be good for IKEA, but bad for the local economy.
- flexie 13y agoCall me boring but IKEA is one of the greatest shops I know. I'd really like to own shares in IKEA. I don't know any other furniture store that comes close to having decent design and decent quality combined with decent prices and immediate delivery. Most other cheap end furniture stores have crappy design, lousy quality. As of today, if you want to buy a sofa, IKEA is one of the very few furniture stores where you can actually pick up the sofa right away. It's also one of the very few furniture stores that doesn't promote a few items and then hikes up the prices of other items. Prices are consistently average or sort of low so that customers trust that they are not being screwed. They are also great at having products for all price points. Even if you don't buy that sofa you are still likely to spend some money on napkins or towels or the meatballs. And imaging being able to test a new product or pricing or design in one or two of your stores that you know to have average customers and then roll out the product all over the world.
- guard-of-terra 13y agoTo counter your opinion: Most of the Ikea furniture we owned lost form in a few years: Think sliding sections that stuck, aluminium tubes that deformed after some use. I'm not sure about price but the experience was subpar. Won't buy something expensive from them, like a sofa. We still enjoy Ikea as a source of smaller kitchenware and the like. And food is nice as well. And most of the furniture in my room were custom-built. It's not that expensive even, and allowed us to make a very smart and integrated use of the space we've got. Build times aren't great tho.
- zorbo 13y agoI've heard similar problems from other people. I've been buying Ikea furniture almost my entire life and I've never experienced this problem. Naturally I've had Ikea products wear and tear, but not generally faster than products from other companies in comparable price ranges.
- sspiff 13y agoMost of our stuff is from Ikea. There's a 2 tables, 1 desk and 4 chairs in our apartment not from Ikea. Nothing broke so far (3 years in). Our main sofa is a little bent in the middle, but not obviously so. I only noticed because before out vacuum cleaner's head could just fit underneath the sofa, and now only fits under at the far sides. The quality is not great. Most of their furniture is pressed wood, and is easily damaged. But in their price segment, I think they do pretty well.
- indlebe 13y agoI'm wondering why lists in 1977: Toronto (New York)? Is this a typo?
- cpwright 13y agoNorth York, not New York. York is a city near Toronto.
- personZ 13y ago"York is a city near Toronto." Just to clarify, both York and North York are now a part of the amalgamated city of Toronto (1998), and do not exist as distinct jurisdictions. Colloquially people still refer to North York, but seldom refer to York as a distinct area. It's just Toronto. On this same line of British names in North America, Fort York was the British military fort in Toronto
- jimmyrocks 13y agoIt should read North York
- Patrick_Devine 13y agoI remember going to this IKEA as a kid in the late '70s. It wasn't really fancy like the stores are now, but they did have a ball room which was essentially a cage in the middle of the warehouse filled with balls and no supervision. My sister and I loved it.
- waterside81 13y agoInteresting factoid I learned yesterday at an IKEA in Toronto from an employee. The cost of returns/exchanges in their North American markets is 6X the international average because North American customers expect to return/exchange regardless of the rules or restrictions IKEA puts in place.
- yardie 13y agoIn some places consumer protection laws are non-existent. Even in the US some places will try to talk you out of it (ever try to return something in Chinatown, NYC). I'm surprised it isn't higher for their European stores. The EU consumer protection laws are much stronger than the ones in the US, as Apple has found out.
- tormeh 13y agoYeah, in some ways they are, but the rules for returning stuff are usually that the thing must be defect in some obvious way. That you're unsatisfied is usually not enough. Even in the case (like online shopping) when you can return stuff, it has to be unopened and unused. The rules on how long your product has to work are better, though.
- gknoy 13y agoGiven that sometimes the only way to tell that an Ikea item is defective is to open it and try to put it together ("Hey, these holes don't line up, and that board is warped..."), a requirement to be unopened an unused would be ludicrous. I love the Ikea pieces we have. As someone else said, they're far better than other put-it-together-yourself pieces I've ever bought. However, quality has been flaky. I bought 4x of a shelving unit (Trofast), and two of them had a single piece where the holes were not aligned correctly. (The first one, I thought maybe it was just me, but it was clear after putting together two more that #1 and #4 were defective.) Fortunately, it was a different piece in each, so I was able to cobble together three pieces of furniture and return the fourth. They were very gracious and allowed me to return it despite the defect being only something you could tell when you actually tried to put it together. Since I was there with my kids, I would have been extremely unhappy had they asked me to demonstrate its failure. ;)
- jimmyrocks 13y agoThe first one in the US was Philadelphia (Plymouth Meeting). It later moved to Conshohocken.
- Cyph0n 13y agoFirst Arab city to get a store was Jeddah in '83. It was shortly followed by one in Kuwait City in '84. I was expecting a much later date actually.
- djb_hackernews 13y ago3 stores on the teeny tiny Canary Islands? What's going on down there?
- Holbein 13y agoIt's multiple islands. You don't want to take your car on a ferry to go to a different island just to buy some furniture.
- arethuza 13y agoHugely popular tourist destination with a lot of people buying holiday homes there?
- calgoo 13y agoAnd most of them are not "IKEA" in themselves, they are franchises.
- allworknoplay 13y agoIt's so weird, I noticed that too and came here to comment. Two of them were there before there were ANY in Spain. So confusing.
- jpatokal 13y agoThe Canaries were (and may still be) the #1 tourist destination for Scandinavians escaping the long winter.
- TomatoTomato 13y agoWashington DC (Woodbridge) store point is placed in Michigan Edit: and when you go backwards past/before Detroit, it removes both Detroit and the Woodbridge points
- TomatoTomato 13y agoEdit2: Problem is with duplicate/wrong lat-long data attributes. Same issue with Heerlen/Haarlem and Boston (Stoughton)/Southampton. Edit3: London (Wembley), Hamburg (Schnelsen), Milan (Carugate), Beijing (Chao Yang), St. Peterburg (Parnas), Ulm, and Samara aren't working at all as well.
- yardie 13y agoWhy nothing in the African and South American continent. Morocco is a perfectly viable, stable economy. I would envision the same for Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil (import laws are nuts) and Uruguay as well. I wonder what goes into deciding when a country is suitable to have an IKEA? Is it corruption, stability, economy?
- andyroid 13y agoIKEA got burnt pretty badly in Russia by (alleged) corruption [0]. I think they'll play it safe for a while. [0] http://www.theage.com.au/world/corruption-halts-ikea-in-russia-20110306-1bji5.html http://www.theage.com.au/world/corruption-halts-ikea-in-russ...
- wallzz 13y agoNorth Africa is a stable and dynamic market, since these countries are yet investing in infrastructure, from an article dated in 2008 , it was going to open a store in Algiers -Algeria- , but nothing has yet happened. source : http://www.ccmp.fr/collection-ccmp/cas-ikea-en-algerie-une-communication-a-inventer http://www.ccmp.fr/collection-ccmp/cas-ikea-en-algerie-une-c...
- hcarvalhoalves 13y agoMaybe import laws are a factor, but most likely they haven't entered Brazil because the local competition [1] wouldn't make it profitable. [1] http://www.tokstok.com.br/ http://www.tokstok.com.br/
- tellarin 13y agoIKEA would blow Tokstok and the like out of the water in both quality and price. Besides crazy import laws, what I see as the major blocker there is that Brazilians are not very fond of self-service stores and of having to carry their purchased stuff home and assemble it themselves. Of course IKEA could try what they do in places like China, where they partner with a local company for delivery/assemble. But then maybe the price for that service would be a factor.
- tormeh 13y agoNothing in India or Brazil. Why?
- asciimo 13y ago> but IKEA has been global from its' early days I don't think I've seen this flavor of apostrophe misuse before.
- jballanc 13y agoNice visualization, but it's missing one of the newest locations (understandably, as it just opened on April 22nd): Bodrum, Turkey! What's interesting about this location is that it is, essentially, show room only. There's a smaller warehouse, but they don't stock the full line of items. For most items you will have to place a delivery order. I don't know if this is the first of it's kind, but it is a really interesting adaptation that Ikea has made to the market. Even though Bodrum has experienced significant growth as of late, it is still primarily a seasonal resort town with the population tripling or even quadrupling during the summer months. It definitely wouldn't make sense to spend the money on a full-size warehouse that would only be used at full capacity 4 months of the year, but at the same time this is a market that seems very ripe for Ikea (many people furnishing summer homes probably aren't interested in premium furnishings). So kudos to Ikea for continuing to adapt to the market.
- encoderer 13y agoI noticed at least one error -- The "Washington (Woodbridge)" location drops a pin in Michigan not Virginia.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- fuzzythinker 13y agoTo make it even more useful, store name/city can be bubbled on hover on dot. But since the stores can be very concentrated at the end, one or combination of the following can to be done: - combine dots into larger dots, and/or with different colors, or 3D-ize them if they touch one another. - magnify europe into empty ocean space. - scale map according to screen width.
- sesm 13y agoTypo spotted: St.Peterburg instead of St.Petersburg
- callesgg 13y agoI was expecting somthing more that a proportionally space line with text.
- snake_plissken 13y agoIt's interesting that the stores on the Canary Islands opened so early compared to all of the other ones. On the one hand, they are islands so it makes sense to open a store like Ikea where you can make purchases from a large variety furniture and household items. On the other hand, you have to send via a container ship all of the goods to stock the stores; how often would you need to re-stock? How fast could you restock? how often could you update the offerings?
- pchristensen 13y agoWell, everything has to be shipped there, so Ikea probably has a cost and speed advantage b/c of the flat-pack designs. Shipping has to be a much smaller % of total costs compared to pre-assembled furniture.
- kingofspain 13y agoSomewhat timely, as I just got back from the Canaries. My other half was surprised to see an Ikea on the way back to the airport and assumed it was new (she last visited in the last 90's). Turns out it had been there several years before we got one in the UK.
- usrusr 13y agoMaybe they just happened to be surprisingly scientific about finding the last remaining populations of germans not in driving range from an existing IKEA ;) Joking aside: all those individually owned holiday apartments, all of them way too far from home to be furnished with hand-me-downs and often owned by people who, unlike the natives, already had a lot of exposure to the brand. Looks like the perfect market for IKEA.
- simoes 13y agoThis is a really great and simple visualization, I definitely enjoyed seeing all the little dots go kerplunk :-) One minor issue is that I think your Boston (Stoughton) store GPS coords might be wrong. Scrolling through I noticed the point was dropped in the UK somewhere, might be a confusion with Stoughton, Leicestershire.
- antman 13y agoI am very happy that the largest european "charitable foundation"[1] is featured on HN. Too bad it doesn't do any charitable work. Decent products and decent customer service are important, raising capital by avoiding taxes appears to be more important. [1] http://boingboing.net/2009/08/26/ikea-is-owned-by-a-c.html http://boingboing.net/2009/08/26/ikea-is-owned-by-a-c.html
- Einstalbert 13y agoAs a young 20-something moving out into a place of my own in this day and age, I considered their cheap furniture more of a charity than anything else. I guess a soup kitchen would have been the next thing available to someone in my "salary" range.
- wallzz 13y agoit seems that Africa has a lot to do in order to change the image that the others still has on the continent.
- erbo 13y agoCairo got one in 2013; they're getting there. Perhaps somewhere in South Africa next?
- johnward 13y agoI'm still trying to figure out how there was an IKEA in my area in the early 90's yet I didn't really know about or what IKEA was until sometime within the last 5 years.
- ojbyrne 13y agoThis seems to omit the first IKEA in North America, which opened in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1975, perhaps because it closed in 1988. http://askville.amazon.com/IKEA-stores-USA-compared-years-ago/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=15199694 http://askville.amazon.com/IKEA-stores-USA-compared-years-ag...
- _Adam 13y agoIs anyone else having issues with the site? I'm using Chrome, and some of the text blocks are truncated on the left side.
- mncolinlee 13y agoI can't speak to the quality of IKEA's items because I find that they have the store design from Hell. It's a labyrinth that inevitably snags significant others to waste an entire afternoon in a furniture store. Good luck convincing them to use the shortcuts. I prefer store designs that encourage a shorter, more purposeful shopping experience to one that makes me worry how far away the restrooms and my car are.
- jakebellacera 13y agoThe store layout isn't created by accident, IKEA wants you to see as many products as possible so they can capture those impulse purchases.
- lelandbatey 13y agoInterestingly, when I last went to Ikea, I had the coveted opposite feeling. However, we were shopping for an entire houses worth of furniture, so my use case was a bit different. Because of the large and sequential layout, we were able to go through, test, and choose all the furniture we where looking for in a single pass.
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoYou can get a map on the way in. I'm not sure you can blame IKEA for your S.O. choosing to browse all day.
- lmm 13y agoThe shortcuts are there if you need them, I can be in and out in 10 minutes if I'm looking for something specific. I consider it a very good example of offering a "default" route without taking away your choice. If you want to go straight to bathroom and then leave and your SO wants to tour the store, that's something you need to resolve between the two of you, not Ikea's fault.
- josephjrobison 13y agoThis is the craziest succession of store location openings I've ever seen - Canary Islands before the UK or US or France!?
- stephengoodwin 13y agoAnyone know why Vancouver was the first expansion point of Ikea outside into North America?
- lkrubner 13y agoThey had 6 stores in Canada before they opened their first store in the USA? I wonder what made Canada such an attractive market for them (or what made the USA unattractive). They got into the USA in 1985, when the USA currency hit its post 1973 (floating) exchange rate peak. I wonder if the high exchange rate was a plus or minus from IKEAs point of view?
- chintanp 13y agoGood observation, was also curious to know this.
- sbisker 13y agoNot sure if it's what happened here, but - companies will sometimes "test the waters" in Canada and iron out the kinks before coming to the US. If they screw up, it's on a much smaller stage, and it can be fixed more quietly.
- thedays 13y agoGreat visualisation of the opening of IKEA stores - doesn't appear to show the closure of stores though which could be an interesting addition (perhaps by changing the dot to another colour like black and then extinguishing it?) The first 3 IKEA stores which opened in Sydney - Gordon (not Homebush Bay as is shown on this map), Blacktown and Moore Park - have all since closed - apparently due to a lack of car parking spaces. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ikea-plans-second-mega-sydney-store-20090510-az06.html http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ikea-plans-sec...
- wluu 13y agoThere are some missing ones. It says the first IKEA store in Melbourne opened in 2003 at Richmond. This is incorrect. There was one in Moorabbin which closed its' doors in 2005 and had been open for quite a number of years prior to that. I have items that I purchased there that still work. And I'm surprised they never opened a store in NZ.
- jpatokal 13y agoGiven the rate at which they're expanding in Oz (Canberra is getting one next year!), it's probably a matter of time: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9776365/Renewed-hope-for-NZ-Ikea http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9776365/Renewed-h...
- will_hughes 13y agoA few problems with the Sydney stores too. They show it opening in Sydney (Homebush Bay) in 1975 - that was actually Atarmon. I don't know when it closed. At some point they had one in Moore Park, but I believe that closed when they opened the Rhodes store. Now there's the Tempe store.
- c0nsumer 13y agoSomething is wrong with this. A dot appears in Southeast Michigan in 1985 when "Philadelphia (Conshohocken)" scrolls past. We're not anywhere near there, and the first IKEA in this area (excluding stuff in Canada, a couple hours away) opened in 2006. What's interesting is that if I go to 2006 and find "Detroit (Canton)" and scrub back and forth this dot disappears and reappears.
- cju 13y agoA minor error: first store near Paris in 1983 is "Evry", not "Evryevry"
- tragomaskhalos 13y agoInteresting content, but: I didn't like the way the list of stores on the RHS seemed to be out of synch with the map, until I realised I needed to be looking at the top of the list, where the items were turning yellow. A better design IMO would have a highlighted letterbox in the middle of that list, with stores adding to the map as they hit that.