Ikea opens first high street store for home furnishing accessories

Ikea has opened its very first tiny retailer on the superior street that focuses on home furnishing equipment in the former Kings Mall in Hammersmith, west London.

The metropolis centre retail store is section of the Swedish home furnishings giant’s designs to produce and trial new formats to convey it nearer to more folks dwelling in the United kingdom.

Ikea bought the operate-down procuring centre two a long time back, investing £170 million in buying and refurbishing the mall, which is now called Livat.

It will come in advance of Ikea’s hugely-predicted transfer onto Oxford Road up coming autumn. The household furniture retailer acquired Topshop’s previous flagship keep in the central place in October very last year.

Ikea is known for its warehouse-design and style searching centres, of which it has 47 globally, But Livat stands at 37,000 sq. metres, just more than a third of the dimensions of Ikea’s usual store measurement.

The Ikea outlet inside Livat is just a quarter of the measurement of a typical retailer and will provide 1,800 solutions for clients to get, as well as 4,000 products on screen to present a “’life at home’ inspiration to Londoners”.

It will also be Ikea’s 1st cashless retail outlet in the United kingdom and will element only self-serve checkouts. A Swedish Deli allows buyers to get foodstuff for takeaway.

The shopping mall is now completely permit, with other tenants together with Lidl, a social company called Library of Matters and Sook, a hire-by-the-hour house aimed at pop-ups.

Peter Jekelby, region retail supervisor and main sustainability officer for Ikea United kingdom and Eire, said: “Over the upcoming 3 several years, we will continue on to completely transform as we respond to [our customers’] needs and dreams, nowadays and tomorrow.

“As 1 of the most ground breaking and thrilling marketplaces in the environment for retail and e-commerce, we will stage up our omnichannel investments in London with a uncomplicated objective: to develop into extra client-centric, so that people today can shop with us for a much better, far more sustainable lifetime at residence, anytime, anywhere and nonetheless they decide on.”

London will serve as the retailer’s “test-bed” for trialling these new stores, with the goal of rolling them out across the United kingdom and Ireland in the future.

Jekelby included: “Whilst London is the preliminary concentrate of our town-centre approach, our eyesight is to produce a far better day to day daily life for the a lot of persons.

“All of our endeavours centre on producing satisfied clients, and we will discover from our London solution, whilst continuing to create programs for other metropolis centre places as nicely as the broader United kingdom and Ireland, to carry our offer you even closer.”