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I 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
by arrrg 13y ago
I 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.