Ikea might be coming to a city—yes, a city—near you
Lesson summary
Hi there everyone, it’s time for another Plain English. I’m Jeff. JR is the producer. And Plain English is where we help you upgrade your English with current events and trending topics. By listening to stories from around the world, you’ll improve your English vocabulary and start thinking in English.
Today’s story is all about the Swedish furniture maker, Ikea. If you’ve been to an Ikea store, congratulations. You probably dedicated the majority of a day to go. But now Ikea is experimenting with a new kind of store—a store that can fit in a city center.
In the second half of today’s episode, I’ll show you how to use the English phrasal verb “pick out.” I think we’re ready. Let’s get going.
Smaller Ikea stores may be coming to a downtown near you
When you think of Ikea, you probably think of a few things. Affordable furniture. Flat-pack design. Self-assembly. Hard-to-understand self-assembly instructions. And you probably think of the company’s iconic stores. The massive blue-and-yellow stores are in over 60 countries and they’re on every continent.
But although they’re in a lot of countries, their stores are not always easy to get to. They’re usually on the outskirts of a metro area. That makes sense because each store is about 30,000 square meters.
The nearest Ikea to you might be far away. Ikea stores are usually only in the biggest metro areas . And every metro area might only have one or two Ikea stores. There are almost ten million people in the Chicago region—and two Ikea stores. There are nine stores to serve all of California’s 40 million people.
For that reason, going to Ikea is an excursion. Customers don’t typically stop by Ikea on their way home from doing something else. People get in the car—some people rent cars—and they might drive 30 minutes, an hour, or several hours, to the nearest Ikea. They don’t go often, but when they do invest the time, they buy a lot of things at once . They might even eat at Ikea’s Swedish restaurant.
This arrangement carries several advantages for Ikea. The real estate on the outskirts of the metro area is cheaper and easier to manage than closer-in locations. There’s always enough parking.
To justify the customer’s time investment to get to the store, Ikea made its store layouts like an adventure. Rather than browsing aisles for one or two items, customers follow a snaking path through the whole store—so that a single visit turns into a long walk through bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, closets, and living areas, all filled with Ikea’s products. A typical store carries over 9,000 items, and you can bet each customer sees a lot of them.
And those items are in stock in the store because the store doubles as a warehouse. Since there are only a few stores in a region, and the real estate is cheap, there’s no need for an off-site warehouse.
In fact, half the fun for customers is picking out an item in the store and then chasing it down or waiting for it in the warehouse. Since many items are flat-packed, customers can take several pieces home with them in just one trip. On-site hourly truck rental makes it even easier.
But there’s one big downside to that store format. A customer that just wants a coffee table or some decorations might not want to drive all way to an Ikea, park in an ocean-sized parking lot, and walk through the whole store just to buy one small item. That’s all not to mention the city-dwellers who don’t have access to a car or who don’t want to invest a lot of time to go to one store.
So now Ikea is experimenting with a new store format: the city-center store. You can find these in Paris, Copenhagen, San Francisco, London, and Stockholm. And Ikea says that after years of trial and error, it’s ready to roll out the city format to other urban environments.
Here’s how a city store is different. First, it’s smaller. It’s either in a popular shopping mall or on a main street. It carries only about 2,600 products—less than a third of a large-format store. You might not find the largest pieces there, but you can still find coffee tables, roll-up mattresses, bookshelves, and other apartment-sized items.
Second, while city stores have some inventory on site, they also serve as showrooms for online orders. Someone coming home from work might not be able to toss a couch on the back of a bicycle. But that person can browse the couch and select the fabric in the store, and then order it for home delivery.
Here’s another way the city store is different: It has different people. The company says a lot of city store customers are “new to Ikea.” Perhaps they never felt comfortable ordering online without seeing something in person and perhaps they never had the ability to go to a large-format store. But they can pop into a city store without a big time commitment.
Ikea found that city locations did good business by themselves. But in metro areas with a city location, both online orders and orders at traditional stores increased.
So now after years of experimenting in Paris, Stockholm, and other city centers, Ikea is ready to roll out the city format to other cities. For all of you without a car, or without an entire day to spare, you, too, might be able to enjoy the Ikea experience soon.
I lived in Chicago for 15 years; I probably went to Ikea three times. And I had a car! It’s just, every time I thought I might want to go, I thought about driving all the way out to Schaumburg, like 45 minutes away, parking, walking through the entire store—it’s just exhausting. I don’t like shopping as an activity—when I go shopping, it’s not to have fun, it’s to buy a specific thing. If there had been an Ikea in the city, I would have gone more often. So I think this is a good idea to appeal to more people like me.
Great stories make learning English fun
