IKEA has announced that it is launching an online store in Spain similar to the e-commerce platform it runs in the US, Holland and the UK. "The aim is to facilitate purchases through various sales channels," according to the company.
To back up the Swedish multinational’s online offering, IKEA also is building a new type of store format located in city centres, one of which is due to be located in the Algarve next year.
These urban mini-IKEAs are smaller than the traditional superstore format. The first City Store opening was in Hamburg in June 2014 with 18,000 square metres of commercial area over four floors.
The Hamburg investment of €80 million created 300 jobs and, now that management has learnt from this pilot scheme, it plans to open similar store formats in Portugal during 2015.
Where this leaves the massive IKEA retail park development between Loulé and Faro is as yet unknown to the media.
If a smaller store format linked to online sales is the way IKEA now is heading, the Algarve’s IKEA shopping centre project may now be suspended with the loss of millions of euros in future council taxes.
Local business groups managed successfully to serve an injunction to halt IKEA breaking ground near Loulé claiming damage to local trade would result from the Swedish shopping centre scheme. Environmental concerns went unheeded as the project was given the green light by Loulé council.
With no court date set to resolve these trading issues, the new IKEA format taking urban space rather than a green field site may be a solution to the Swedish group’s desire to expand in Portugal, despite the varied welcome it so far has received in the Algarve.
