Ikea earmarks €1bn to adapt London stores for ecommerce

Tolga Öncü, retail manager at Ingka Group, told Reuters that a third of the total amount of investment had been earmarked for London, which the retail giant sees as a test bed for new formats and logistics set-ups. 

“Most of it will be in our existing stores, since we talk about transforming, redesigning the purpose of the square metres,” Öncü said. 

“We feel we have a catch-up to do on the back-end of our operation [and] we have realised that by including stores in our last mile and fulfilment design network we can create a win-win situation.”

Öncü also said that shipping online purchases from the warehouse sections of nearby out-of-town stores will mean faster and cheaper deliveries, with lower emissions, than shipping from a few logistics centres.

“Instead of building central warehouse capacities for online buys, why don’t we send it from our Ikea stores?”

Automating existing out-of-town warehouses will also be a major point of investment for the giant. 

Ingka Centres, Ikea’s property arm, will also focus investment on expanding big-box and new meeting place stores into new territories in Romania, China and India, and new city stores, as well as planning studios in Canada, Denmark, Italy, India, the United States and other countries.

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