Visualisation of the expansion of IKEA

by davidbarker • 12 years ago

156 123 12 years ago

fauria• 12 years ago

Comment from a Galant table, sitting on a Markus chair.

arrrg• 12 years ago

I really didn’t know that Germany was and still is such an important market for IKEA. It’s the country with the most stores (eight more than the US, but Germany has less than a third of the inhabitants of the US and is much more densely populated).

It looks like some smaller European countries might have a higher store per person count (Netherlands, for example), but of all the larger countries Germany has the most stores.

I wonder why IKEA expanded into Germany early and hasn’t lost steam since.

hjnilsson• 12 years ago

Ingvar Kamprad (the founder) is of German descent (his grandparents were german) so it is quite natural for him to expand to that market after Scandinavia, also being the largest economy of Europe doesn't hurt.

pfalke• 12 years ago

No other big box brand ever gained signifacant market share in Germany besides IKEA. As competition is low, it's natural for IKEA to continue saturating the market. They are even building stores in city centers now, e.g. in Hamburg.

omnibrain2• 12 years ago

Germans like it cheap. And Ikea generally seems to offer a better quality than other cheap furniture chains. It's of course not only that germans prefer to pay less, but also that while germany is economically doing well a broad percentage of people had only little real wage increase in the last 10 to 15 years.

edemay• 12 years ago

Also: Culturally speaking, Germans have (like the Dutch), always valued good product design. There's a nice cultural fit between IKEA (economical, good design) and the german market.

naterator• 12 years ago

What surprised me more was that the Canary Islands was one of the first markets for IKEA (before 1985). I mean, the Canary Islands before Madrid or New York? WTF? I can only assume they were using as a test market, like Kansas City for Google Fiber, but still... wow!

kalleboo• 12 years ago

A lot of IKEAs early international expansion was franchisees, so it's probably more a question of someone there was interested in starting a franchise than that IKEA made a conscious decision that it was a market they were interested in.

rickisen• 12 years ago

Well there are a lot of swedish stuff in the Canry islands. It's probably the number one holiday spot for Swedes. Or at least it was back then. Just walking down the beach there you'll hear swedish everywhere. And there are plenty of swedes who owns a house there...

crussmann• 12 years ago

Very surprising how long it took them to enter the U.S. market, especially given that they were in North America (Canada) long before.

It'd be interesting to know more about how that decision was made, and also if this has shaped the general perception of Ikea in Canada vs. The States.

calgoo3• 12 years ago

From what i remember, there was issues with Imports to the USA. At least thats what I remember...

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

I was surprised to see Sydney, Australia as one of the first international stores.

nisse72• 12 years ago

And 40 years later, still no IKEA in New Zealand.

smackfu• 12 years ago

Maybe Canada was a trial for the US market.

rwhitman• 12 years ago

I attended the grand opening of the first Ikea in the USA in Plymouth Meeting PA as a little kid. (The chart says Conshohocken, thats actually a new store they opened recently)

Because my mom is British she knew what it was already and was geeking out but nobody else seemed as excited. I was really young but I kind of remember the opening being a pretty lavish affair without many people in attendance.

omnibrain2• 12 years ago

It would be nice if one could click on one of the dots and the site showed what store it is. (I'm using Chrome 33, if that's supposed to work)

croisillon• 12 years ago

I agree, I'm on Firefox and wanted to check some locations by clicking/hovering it and it only says "store".

tonypace• 12 years ago

It's missing the only two locations I've ever been to: one closed (Halifax) and one just opened (Taichung). Given that no dots disappeared, I suspect there were other closures that aren't shown.

300zxkyle• 12 years ago

I was wondering where the Halifax one was, I distinctly remember being there as a child. Ballpit!

mrweasel• 12 years ago

There's another one that's a little funny. Ikea opened in Aalborg Denmark in the 80s and closed again in the 90s. That store isn't shown, it's only the reopening in 2008 that's listed.

My point is: "Ikea stores fails too"

mjs• 12 years ago

Closed stores do seem to be missing. There were several that were around (~1985 - ~1995) in Victoria, Australia that are not listed.

Semi-citation for one: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200701301934... (Think the dates are wrong.)

wf• 12 years ago

You can add Kansas City to your visualization in 2014!

izzydata• 12 years ago

Ah, so that's what that building is. The blue on the outside made me think it was just temporary construction covering or something. It's a little bit closer than Nebraska Furniture mart so I will have to check it out when it is done.

hospadam• 12 years ago

And St. Louis as well.

rhodin• 12 years ago

Fall 2015 I've heard

jackalope• 12 years ago

It frustrates me that even as they expand, they seem to have a distribution model that is one-way-only. If your local store doesn't have an item, you can locate the stores that have it, but they won't send it to the store nearest you. You can order items online, but you can't pick them up at a local store to save on the outrageously high shipping fees. This is even more frustrating when the item is unavailable online, but is sitting in another store 200 miles away. Can't they toss it on a truck for redistribution?

cpwright2• 12 years ago

The stores are franchises, so it makes sense that they won't ship it from store to store. I can even sort of see why they might not want to ship a single item to a store; given that they might want to batch these things up and skip the middle step of a distribution center.

I think they should probably at least try to figure out site-to-store or equivalent if they want to expand their online presence (maybe there isn't enough profit in it if they have to put up with distribution inefficiencies).

bjourne• 12 years ago

Technically franchises. Only a minority of stores have external owners and most of them are owned by the Ikea corporation.

filvdg• 12 years ago

Why no stores in South America ? import restrictions?

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

I suppose it is because 2 facts:

1- Bigger than 100% import duties on some of those countries.

2- Very small middle class, who are the buyers of IKEA.

I have lived in Brazil. Only two classes there: The ultra wealthy and the poor. I was ultra wealthy there, but live is worth nothing there.

Probably Chile(too far), and in the future Colombia are the only places they could expand.

pacofvf• 12 years ago

IKEA should come to Mexico, furniture is really expensive here or low quality, if you want to save money and want quality you have to drive kms away to a carpenter town.

emilioolivares• 12 years ago

Totally agree, we've had to deal with such crappy expensive furniture for too long! Saludos.

fmela• 12 years ago

That sounds like it would be good for IKEA, but bad for the local economy.

flexie• 12 years ago

Call me boring but IKEA is one of the greatest shops I know. I'd really like to own shares in IKEA.

I don't know any other furniture store that comes close to having decent design and decent quality combined with decent prices and immediate delivery. Most other cheap end furniture stores have crappy design, lousy quality.

As of today, if you want to buy a sofa, IKEA is one of the very few furniture stores where you can actually pick up the sofa right away. It's also one of the very few furniture stores that doesn't promote a few items and then hikes up the prices of other items. Prices are consistently average or sort of low so that customers trust that they are not being screwed.

They are also great at having products for all price points. Even if you don't buy that sofa you are still likely to spend some money on napkins or towels or the meatballs.

And imaging being able to test a new product or pricing or design in one or two of your stores that you know to have average customers and then roll out the product all over the world.

guard-of-terra• 12 years ago

To counter your opinion:

Most of the Ikea furniture we owned lost form in a few years: Think sliding sections that stuck, aluminium tubes that deformed after some use.

I'm not sure about price but the experience was subpar. Won't buy something expensive from them, like a sofa.

We still enjoy Ikea as a source of smaller kitchenware and the like. And food is nice as well.

And most of the furniture in my room were custom-built. It's not that expensive even, and allowed us to make a very smart and integrated use of the space we've got. Build times aren't great tho.

zorbo• 12 years ago

I've heard similar problems from other people. I've been buying Ikea furniture almost my entire life and I've never experienced this problem. Naturally I've had Ikea products wear and tear, but not generally faster than products from other companies in comparable price ranges.

sspiff• 12 years ago

Most of our stuff is from Ikea. There's a 2 tables, 1 desk and 4 chairs in our apartment not from Ikea.

Nothing broke so far (3 years in). Our main sofa is a little bent in the middle, but not obviously so. I only noticed because before out vacuum cleaner's head could just fit underneath the sofa, and now only fits under at the far sides.

The quality is not great. Most of their furniture is pressed wood, and is easily damaged. But in their price segment, I think they do pretty well.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

I have a black leather couch I bought from Ikea more than 10 years ago (~$1000). To this day, its in my living/family room. Its survived 3+ moves, I've slept on it for months at a time, I've had friends have a lot of sex on it while I was out of town, etc. It has been through a lot of abuse, but still looks like new.

I only buy Ikea furniture now.

uniclaude• 12 years ago

I agree.

I feel like Ikea's main innovation was to integrate programmed obsolescence in tasteful furniture. Before I knew Ikea, buying a new bookshelf every couple years was foreign to me. Now, I have to take into consideration that any furniture I get there might break or bend under normal use, that even a wok might lose its non-stick surface after only a few uses, and many more reasons for my older relatives to make fun of me and my shiny purchases.

I recently graduated from Ikea though, and most of the furniture in my apartment is also custom built. Best decision I took in the last couple of years (this, and learning Haskell)

buckbova• 12 years ago

It's fine for what it is and would only buy for cheap office furniture.

My last home had an IKEA kitchen that was a little over 10 years old with IKEA cabinets and flooring and what not. It was garbage. Cabinets surrounding the sink base had turned into deteriorated cardboard from contact with water. The flooring, wood laminate, felt like walking on plastic. The cabinets sat on plastic stilts. The whole thing was cheap and lousy.

I tore that all out before I moved in a stick of furniture.

I did salvage some for garage shelving.

Htsthbjig2• 12 years ago

Interesting. I live in Europe, my house is entirely filled with IKEA furniture.

So is my the house of my closest family members. Not a single problem so far and we have been using those things since the nineties.

We buy probably the most expensive things in IKEA though (which is cheap compared to other places). If we buy a lamp, we buy the best one with LED lights and so on. So probably it has something to do with that.

mortenjorck• 12 years ago

In my experience, any general assessment of the quality of Ikea furniture isn't really useful, because it spans a wider gamut than almost any other furniture retailer.

I've spent $40 on a chest of drawers that, while performing better than a $40 chest of drawers from Target, wasn't really all that great. I've also spent $150 on a different chest of drawers that has moved with me and still looks and feels as good as the day it was assembled. There's a rough you-get-what-you-pay-for with Ikea, but even that isn't a hard and fast rule: I bought the lowest-end sofa (since discontinued) back in 2005, and it's probably lasted longer than the next step up would have simply because it's a no-compromise wood-armed design rather than a some-compromises full-upholstery design.

There's also the Ikea "Stockholm" class, which tends to be priced more like Crate & Barrel, but I can't speak to its quality from experience.

pingec2• 12 years ago

I don't like IKEA at all.

1. I don't like things that break.

Perhaps the price/performance ratio is not too bad but overall, the quality is lacking. Some have said their IKEA furniture has lasted for decades, well this is nothing special, really. Where I live it is normal to have furniture made of wood that is a hundred years old and it will be around for many more generations, if they decide to keep it. It always amazes me how many people are brainwashed with planned obsolescence.

2. Even if the quality was fine, I don't like the design.

Whenever I go to IKEA I feel some form of a culture shock. Everything looks so cold... so Scandinavian. I live in the Mediterranean and the furniture we are used to looks way different than what IKEA sell.

jschulenklopper• 12 years ago

I'd really like to own shares in IKEA.

Same here, but that will not be possible. IKEA turns out to be a Dutch 'stichting', as described in a very interesting article in The Economist on the financial side of IKEA: http://www.economist.com/node/6919139

"[...] an outfit that ingeniously exploits the quirks of different jurisdictions to create a charity, dedicated to a somewhat banal cause, that is not only the world's richest foundation, but is at the moment also one of its least generous."

"The parent for all IKEA companies is Ingka Holding, a private Dutch-registered company. Ingka Holding, in turn, belongs entirely to Stichting Ingka Foundation. This is a Dutch-registered, tax-exempt, non-profit-making legal entity, which was given the shares of Mr Kamprad in 1982."

darkmighty• 12 years ago

I agree that the "charity" definition is somewhat out of place here, but there's nothing with being a not for profit with definite goals -- the stated goal of "Innovation in the field of architectural and interior design" to me sounds a lot more solid than most other companies that are in it for a quick buck.

Basically, society has decided that charities are nice and therefore deserve a competitive boost in form of tax exempts. Now It has to decide how nice are non-profits with a little more care.

drak0n1c• 12 years ago

Walmart's online furniture offerings are starting to outcompete Ikea's low end when it comes to price and quality. And you can choose between free delivery or in-store pickup. I just bought furniture essentials (dining set, dresser, bookcase) for my new apartment on Walmart's site for nearly half the price of getting it all at Ikea. As I assemble them they look nice and seem very solid, and the reviews say they last at least a few years just like Ikea.

Walmart still isn't good for a few items, but those niches are nicely filled by Amazon (got an amazing 13 inch mattress from Amazon). Outside of those niches Walmart is cheaper than Amazon and Ikea.

I rent, not own, so I'm just talking about low-end here.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

close to having decent design and decent quality

Decent design, maybe, but decent quality, certainly not. Have you ever cut through IKEA furniture for starters ? Most of the "wooden" stuff they sell is made of small wood chunks glued together which have no strength altogether and can be cut through like butter. This is such a joke.

I recently cut through an IKEA table I owned, which looked like it had a wooden top, and I was shocked to discover it was actually carton below a very thin layer of wood that made up the volume.

IKEA's materials are the cheapest stuff ever, and they try to hide that with the design, but seriously, it's just shite past the appearance.

lloeki• 12 years ago

They have a wide range of products and their structure is readily advertised, so no surprise. My table is solid wood, weights a ton and is damn robust. Both my table and bed disassemble in a snap and look great. IOW great, thorough design, but there's the accompanying price tag. Barring outliers[0], their cheap offering is cheap throughout, down to the materials. I've been extremely disappointed with their mattresses though, at any price tag, but I'm picky on that front.

[0] http://www.ikea.com/fr/fr/catalog/products/85590800/

indlebe• 12 years ago

I'm wondering why lists in 1977: Toronto (New York)? Is this a typo?

cpwright2• 12 years ago

North York, not New York. York is a city near Toronto.

personZ• 12 years ago

"York is a city near Toronto."

Just to clarify, both York and North York are now a part of the amalgamated city of Toronto (1998), and do not exist as distinct jurisdictions. Colloquially people still refer to North York, but seldom refer to York as a distinct area. It's just Toronto.

On this same line of British names in North America, Fort York was the British military fort in Toronto

jimmyrocks2• 12 years ago

It should read North York

Patrick_Devine• 12 years ago

I remember going to this IKEA as a kid in the late '70s. It wasn't really fancy like the stores are now, but they did have a ball room which was essentially a cage in the middle of the warehouse filled with balls and no supervision. My sister and I loved it.

waterside81• 12 years ago

Interesting factoid I learned yesterday at an IKEA in Toronto from an employee. The cost of returns/exchanges in their North American markets is 6X the international average because North American customers expect to return/exchange regardless of the rules or restrictions IKEA puts in place.

yardie3• 12 years ago

In some places consumer protection laws are non-existent. Even in the US some places will try to talk you out of it (ever try to return something in Chinatown, NYC). I'm surprised it isn't higher for their European stores. The EU consumer protection laws are much stronger than the ones in the US, as Apple has found out.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Yeah, in some ways they are, but the rules for returning stuff are usually that the thing must be defect in some obvious way. That you're unsatisfied is usually not enough. Even in the case (like online shopping) when you can return stuff, it has to be unopened and unused.

The rules on how long your product has to work are better, though.

lmm2• 12 years ago

The EU has pretty strong consumer protection laws but we don't have this culture where you just buy something and return it if you don't like it, even in shops that advertise you can do that. The social expectation is that you only buy things you want, and only return them if there's an actual problem with them.

neona• 12 years ago

As someone who's worked retail in america, this is entirely unsurprising. I didn't sell furniture for the most part, but it's probably consistent with my experiences.

This has little to do with defective products. People just expect to be able to return any product they don't like, or if they got the wrong one, or for whatever arbitrary reason. I would always be asked by customers if they could return it if they didn't like it, and they were always dismayed to learn that we generally only took returns if the product was defective. I lost more than a few sales that way.

My guess is that this comes from two things. First, most people are wholly uninterested on doing any product research. They want to just buy something that seems right, and then just take it back if they don't like it. Second, some stores will accept returns so readily (sometimes even of merchandise not actually sold by that chain!) that customers now expect it from everyone. Khol's is particularly notorious for this - we joke that their return policy is "yes."

giarc2• 12 years ago

I work with a lady who used to work at IKEA returns (in a Canadian store). She said there were two consistent "scams" that appeared all the time.

1. People would bring in furniture that was no longer sold at IKEA but claimed they just bought it 30 days ago.

2. People would go around to garage/yard sales and buy used IKEA furniture and then try to return it.

xrjn• 12 years ago

Wouldn't you need a receipt to return items though?

jimmyrocks2• 12 years ago

The first one in the US was Philadelphia (Plymouth Meeting). It later moved to Conshohocken.

Cyph0n• 12 years ago

First Arab city to get a store was Jeddah in '83. It was shortly followed by one in Kuwait City in '84. I was expecting a much later date actually.

djb_hackernews• 12 years ago

3 stores on the teeny tiny Canary Islands? What's going on down there?

Holbein• 12 years ago

It's multiple islands. You don't want to take your car on a ferry to go to a different island just to buy some furniture.

arethuza• 12 years ago

Hugely popular tourist destination with a lot of people buying holiday homes there?

calgoo3• 12 years ago

And most of them are not "IKEA" in themselves, they are franchises.

allworknoplay• 12 years ago

It's so weird, I noticed that too and came here to comment. Two of them were there before there were ANY in Spain. So confusing.

jpatokal2• 12 years ago

The Canaries were (and may still be) the #1 tourist destination for Scandinavians escaping the long winter.

TomatoTomato2• 12 years ago

Washington DC (Woodbridge) store point is placed in Michigan

Edit: and when you go backwards past/before Detroit, it removes both Detroit and the Woodbridge points

TomatoTomato2• 12 years ago

Edit2: Problem is with duplicate/wrong lat-long data attributes. Same issue with Heerlen/Haarlem and Boston (Stoughton)/Southampton.

Edit3: London (Wembley), Hamburg (Schnelsen), Milan (Carugate), Beijing (Chao Yang), St. Peterburg (Parnas), Ulm, and Samara aren't working at all as well.

yardie3• 12 years ago

Why nothing in the African and South American continent. Morocco is a perfectly viable, stable economy. I would envision the same for Tunisia, Egypt, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil (import laws are nuts) and Uruguay as well.

I wonder what goes into deciding when a country is suitable to have an IKEA? Is it corruption, stability, economy?

andyroid• 12 years ago

IKEA got burnt pretty badly in Russia by (alleged) corruption [0]. I think they'll play it safe for a while.

[0] http://www.theage.com.au/world/corruption-halts-ikea-in-russ...

wallzz2• 12 years ago

North Africa is a stable and dynamic market, since these countries are yet investing in infrastructure, from an article dated in 2008 , it was going to open a store in Algiers -Algeria- , but nothing has yet happened. source : http://www.ccmp.fr/collection-ccmp/cas-ikea-en-algerie-une-c...

hcarvalhoalves• 12 years ago

Maybe import laws are a factor, but most likely they haven't entered Brazil because the local competition [1] wouldn't make it profitable.

[1] http://www.tokstok.com.br/

tellarin• 12 years ago

IKEA would blow Tokstok and the like out of the water in both quality and price.

Besides crazy import laws, what I see as the major blocker there is that Brazilians are not very fond of self-service stores and of having to carry their purchased stuff home and assemble it themselves.

Of course IKEA could try what they do in places like China, where they partner with a local company for delivery/assemble. But then maybe the price for that service would be a factor.

tormeh2• 12 years ago

Nothing in India or Brazil. Why?

asciimo• 12 years ago

but IKEA has been global from its' early days

I don't think I've seen this flavor of apostrophe misuse before.

jballanc• 12 years ago

Nice visualization, but it's missing one of the newest locations (understandably, as it just opened on April 22nd): Bodrum, Turkey!

What's interesting about this location is that it is, essentially, show room only. There's a smaller warehouse, but they don't stock the full line of items. For most items you will have to place a delivery order. I don't know if this is the first of it's kind, but it is a really interesting adaptation that Ikea has made to the market.

Even though Bodrum has experienced significant growth as of late, it is still primarily a seasonal resort town with the population tripling or even quadrupling during the summer months. It definitely wouldn't make sense to spend the money on a full-size warehouse that would only be used at full capacity 4 months of the year, but at the same time this is a market that seems very ripe for Ikea (many people furnishing summer homes probably aren't interested in premium furnishings). So kudos to Ikea for continuing to adapt to the market.

encoderer• 12 years ago

I noticed at least one error -- The "Washington (Woodbridge)" location drops a pin in Michigan not Virginia.

fuzzythinker• 12 years ago

To make it even more useful, store name/city can be bubbled on hover on dot. But since the stores can be very concentrated at the end, one or combination of the following can to be done:

- combine dots into larger dots, and/or with different colors, or 3D-ize them if they touch one another.

- magnify europe into empty ocean space.

- scale map according to screen width.

sesm• 12 years ago

Typo spotted: St.Peterburg instead of St.Petersburg

callesgg• 12 years ago

I was expecting somthing more that a proportionally space line with text.

snake_plissken• 12 years ago

It's interesting that the stores on the Canary Islands opened so early compared to all of the other ones. On the one hand, they are islands so it makes sense to open a store like Ikea where you can make purchases from a large variety furniture and household items. On the other hand, you have to send via a container ship all of the goods to stock the stores; how often would you need to re-stock? How fast could you restock? how often could you update the offerings?

pchristensen• 12 years ago

Well, everything has to be shipped there, so Ikea probably has a cost and speed advantage b/c of the flat-pack designs. Shipping has to be a much smaller % of total costs compared to pre-assembled furniture.

kingofspain• 12 years ago

Somewhat timely, as I just got back from the Canaries. My other half was surprised to see an Ikea on the way back to the airport and assumed it was new (she last visited in the last 90's). Turns out it had been there several years before we got one in the UK.

usrusr• 12 years ago

Maybe they just happened to be surprisingly scientific about finding the last remaining populations of germans not in driving range from an existing IKEA ;)

Joking aside: all those individually owned holiday apartments, all of them way too far from home to be furnished with hand-me-downs and often owned by people who, unlike the natives, already had a lot of exposure to the brand. Looks like the perfect market for IKEA.

simoes• 12 years ago

This is a really great and simple visualization, I definitely enjoyed seeing all the little dots go kerplunk :-)

One minor issue is that I think your Boston (Stoughton) store GPS coords might be wrong. Scrolling through I noticed the point was dropped in the UK somewhere, might be a confusion with Stoughton, Leicestershire.

antman• 12 years ago

I am very happy that the largest european "charitable foundation"[1] is featured on HN. Too bad it doesn't do any charitable work. Decent products and decent customer service are important, raising capital by avoiding taxes appears to be more important. [1] http://boingboing.net/2009/08/26/ikea-is-owned-by-a-c.html

Einstalbert• 12 years ago

As a young 20-something moving out into a place of my own in this day and age, I considered their cheap furniture more of a charity than anything else. I guess a soup kitchen would have been the next thing available to someone in my "salary" range.

wallzz2• 12 years ago

it seems that Africa has a lot to do in order to change the image that the others still has on the continent.

erbo• 12 years ago

Cairo got one in 2013; they're getting there. Perhaps somewhere in South Africa next?

johnward• 12 years ago

I'm still trying to figure out how there was an IKEA in my area in the early 90's yet I didn't really know about or what IKEA was until sometime within the last 5 years.

ojbyrne• 12 years ago

This seems to omit the first IKEA in North America, which opened in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1975, perhaps because it closed in 1988.

http://askville.amazon.com/IKEA-stores-USA-compared-years-ag...

_Adam• 12 years ago

Is anyone else having issues with the site? I'm using Chrome, and some of the text blocks are truncated on the left side.

mncolinlee• 12 years ago

I can't speak to the quality of IKEA's items because I find that they have the store design from Hell. It's a labyrinth that inevitably snags significant others to waste an entire afternoon in a furniture store. Good luck convincing them to use the shortcuts. I prefer store designs that encourage a shorter, more purposeful shopping experience to one that makes me worry how far away the restrooms and my car are.

jakebellacera• 12 years ago

The store layout isn't created by accident, IKEA wants you to see as many products as possible so they can capture those impulse purchases.

lelandbatey• 12 years ago

Interestingly, when I last went to Ikea, I had the coveted opposite feeling. However, we were shopping for an entire houses worth of furniture, so my use case was a bit different.

Because of the large and sequential layout, we were able to go through, test, and choose all the furniture we where looking for in a single pass.

PhasmaFelis2• 12 years ago

You can get a map on the way in. I'm not sure you can blame IKEA for your S.O. choosing to browse all day.

lmm2• 12 years ago

The shortcuts are there if you need them, I can be in and out in 10 minutes if I'm looking for something specific. I consider it a very good example of offering a "default" route without taking away your choice. If you want to go straight to bathroom and then leave and your SO wants to tour the store, that's something you need to resolve between the two of you, not Ikea's fault.

josephjrobison• 12 years ago

This is the craziest succession of store location openings I've ever seen - Canary Islands before the UK or US or France!?

stephengoodwin• 12 years ago

Anyone know why Vancouver was the first expansion point of Ikea outside into North America?

lkrubner• 12 years ago

They had 6 stores in Canada before they opened their first store in the USA? I wonder what made Canada such an attractive market for them (or what made the USA unattractive). They got into the USA in 1985, when the USA currency hit its post 1973 (floating) exchange rate peak. I wonder if the high exchange rate was a plus or minus from IKEAs point of view?

chintanp• 12 years ago

Good observation, was also curious to know this.

sbisker• 12 years ago

Not sure if it's what happened here, but - companies will sometimes "test the waters" in Canada and iron out the kinks before coming to the US. If they screw up, it's on a much smaller stage, and it can be fixed more quietly.

thedays• 12 years ago

Great visualisation of the opening of IKEA stores - doesn't appear to show the closure of stores though which could be an interesting addition (perhaps by changing the dot to another colour like black and then extinguishing it?)

The first 3 IKEA stores which opened in Sydney - Gordon (not Homebush Bay as is shown on this map), Blacktown and Moore Park - have all since closed - apparently due to a lack of car parking spaces. http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ikea-plans-sec...

wluu• 12 years ago

There are some missing ones.

It says the first IKEA store in Melbourne opened in 2003 at Richmond. This is incorrect.

There was one in Moorabbin which closed its' doors in 2005 and had been open for quite a number of years prior to that. I have items that I purchased there that still work.

And I'm surprised they never opened a store in NZ.

jpatokal2• 12 years ago

Given the rate at which they're expanding in Oz (Canberra is getting one next year!), it's probably a matter of time:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9776365/Renewed-h...

will_hughes• 12 years ago

A few problems with the Sydney stores too.

They show it opening in Sydney (Homebush Bay) in 1975 - that was actually Atarmon. I don't know when it closed.

At some point they had one in Moore Park, but I believe that closed when they opened the Rhodes store.

Now there's the Tempe store.

c0nsumer• 12 years ago

Something is wrong with this. A dot appears in Southeast Michigan in 1985 when "Philadelphia (Conshohocken)" scrolls past. We're not anywhere near there, and the first IKEA in this area (excluding stuff in Canada, a couple hours away) opened in 2006.

What's interesting is that if I go to 2006 and find "Detroit (Canton)" and scrub back and forth this dot disappears and reappears.

cju• 12 years ago

A minor error: first store near Paris in 1983 is "Evry", not "Evryevry"

tragomaskhalos• 12 years ago

Interesting content, but:

I didn't like the way the list of stores on the RHS seemed to be out of synch with the map, until I realised I needed to be looking at the top of the list, where the items were turning yellow.

A better design IMO would have a highlighted letterbox in the middle of that list, with stores adding to the map as they hit that.

Visualisation of the expansion of IKEA

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