The world’s largest furniture retailer, Ikea, recorded another profitable year in 2013.
The company has retailing operations in 26 countries and said its share of the market grew last year in nearly all of them.
Profits went up by 3% reaching nearly €28 billion. Particularly strong growth came from China, Russia and the US.
Sales in southern Europe were now “showing good signs of activity”, according to Ikea president Peter Agnefjall, but the company is looking to large, emerging countries as important sources of future growth.
Ikea launched five new stores last year, two of them in China. It is shopping around for the best site to open its first outlets in India.
Despite the emphasis on new stores, visits to them went down slightly last year while its website experienced a growth of nearly 20% with 1.3 billion visits recorded.
The firm has not raced in to promoting its e-commerce with the same intensity as other companies. So far, customers in 13 markets can buy online, despite Ikea’s origins as a mail-order company.
Ikea has set itself the goal of reaching €50 billion in sales by 2020.
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