IKEA plans to sell online through marketplaces

IKEA plans to test “open-source” design and full-range town-centre showrooms as part of the furniture retailer’s efforts to adapt to rapidly changing consumer shopping habits. The budget furniture retailer’s strategy will still be based on its out-of-town warehouse stores, where shoppers pick up their purchases, but it also wants to become more accessible, physically and digitally. It has launched trial store formats such as smaller city centre stores, order and pickup-points and – the latest test format – a kitchen showroom in Stockholm’s financial district. 

Torbjörn Lööf, chief executive of Inter Ikea, said the decision to turn to online retailers — which could include Amazon and Alibaba, though he declined to comment on who he would be working with — is part of a broader overhaul that has also forced the company to turn to new types of stores, particularly in city centres.

But the push to sell through ecommerce retailers could be the biggest change yet, marking the first time Ikea has sold products through a third party and radically revamping its business model.

“We want to learn, and know what it is for a company like Ikea to be there. We want to find out how we could keep our identity on a third-party platform,” Mr Lööf said. 

The group is also planning a digital platform next year that mimics the IT sector’s ‘open-source’ software development, Loof said. This will allow customers to take part in the development as well as testing of new products. “We are launching ‘Co-Create IKEA’, a digital platform where customers will have the possibility to develop and test new products … a bit like the open-source development within IT,” Loof said. 

Mr Lööf’s move came as Inter Ikea said that total sales in the business year until the end of August had risen 5 per cent to €38.3bn. Ikea Group, which accounts for about 94 per cent of sales with the rest made up by other franchisees, reports its own numbers on Tuesday.