IKEA plans new store in Hillingdon, west London |
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Mon, 20 Jun 2005 05:05
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Swedish retailer IKEA has announced that it will locate its newest store next to a London railway station. This move by the world's biggest furniture retailer comes as no surprise as the firm was being frustrated by delays in approvals for its out-of-town centers.
The new store will be located in Hillingdon in west London. Commenting on the new store, Scott Cordrey, IKEA's UK property manager, said, "The concept will be very different to anything we have built before in the IKEA world. This will be a benchmark for retailers in the M25 area, both in flexibility and environmental measures. We've had some challenges with getting planning consent for our traditional-sized stores. Using a multi-floor model we can get far closer to town-center locations." The 20,000 sq m store will also include a restaurant and will be laid out over three levels.
| Graham Sharp, IKEA's town planning manager in the UK, said, "We have reached a point where we are no longer interested in entering into prolonged planning battles. What we want are stores as quickly as we possibly can get them."
This move towards London was expected after the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, refused to grant permission to the firm to build a store in Stockport, near Manchester, since it was apparently contrary to the government policy on out-of-town shopping developments.
Reacting to Ikea's London move, Neil Mason, a senior retail analyst with Mintel, said, "This is an attempt by IKEA to modify its format to get planning consent and make itself more available to consumers in the UK. They've been a victim of their own success in some ways - they're just so popular. They have a winning formula and I see no reason why they can't repeat that with their smaller format stores." He added that the move to sell its products online would boost Ikea's sales targets and cater to shoppers who wanted to avoid the crowds.
But Leigh Sparks, professor of retail studies at Stirling University, was not convinced that this was a good move, "The smaller size of the stores will inevitably mean a compromise on the number of products available. How they handle that will be an interesting choice, and what works and what doesn't work is something they'll have to find out through experimentation," he said.
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