What: After a test in Poland, Ikea also runs a test in Shanghai.

Why it is important: The major innovation is the abandonment of the signposted and imposed customer path.

After four months of renovation, Ikea reopened its Shanghai Xuhui store on 12 August. It has been transformed into a Home Experience of Tomorrow. The store includes 30,200 sq.m of sales area spread on two levels, 9,000 products, 63 exhibition spaces, a 700-seat restaurant and a number of play areas for children. Open areas dedicated to the bedroom, the living room, the kitchen and the office, a repair zone dedicated to “makers”, in which customers and employees share their knowledge in a circular economy perspective, plus an event space, and areas dedicated to large families will be available to customers.

If the rooted customer path has been a pillar of Ikea’s concept for years, current consumers expectations in the Covid context have deeply changed. In Europe, Ikea stores in London and Vienna will also adopt the free flow by the end of the year 2021. As a reminder, the end of the arrowed in-store path has already been successfully tested in Poland (in Szczecin) but Ikea has not indicated its impact on the average basket.

Ikea new store concept