Adjusted for currency impact, IKEA franchisees’ retail sales grew by 4.5 percent in FY18. Total retail sales, which includes sales of both products and services to IKEA customers, amounted to EUR 38.8 billion. India and Latvia became new IKEA markets, and 19 new stores opened around the world. Together 422 IKEA stores in more than 50 markets welcomed 957 million visitors.
Belgium, Romania and Malaysia introduced e-commerce, and customers in 35 markets can now shop for IKEA products online. There were 2.5 billion visits to the IKEA website, and IKEA Place was the world’s number two most downloaded augmented reality app. The app allows people to virtually place furniture in their home.
IKEA innovation and product development delivered many new products such as flat-pack sofas, one thousand products for under Rs 200 in India, solutions for saving water and cleaning the air, and more. In FY18, customers globally bought 6.4 million BILLY bookcases, 92 million LED bulbs, and even 1 million veggie hot dogs since they were launched only 2 months ago.
Customers also discovered inspiring new IKEA product collections by Virgil Abloh, Piet Hein Eek and social entrepreneurs from Jordan, Thailand, Romania and India.
In summer 2018, IKEA announced new and bold commitments to inspire and enable people to live more sustainable lives within the limits of the planet. This includes reducing the total IKEA climate footprint by an average of 70 percent per product and removing all single-use plastic products from the IKEA range.
Together these efforts helped make IKEA affordable, accessible and sustainable for about 750 million people. IKEA has seen continued growth despite a challenging and changing retail environment. People continue to visit IKEA stores to touch, try, shop and get inspired by home furnishing solutions.
Now IKEA will bring that experience closer to even more people. “By 2025, we have the potential to reach and interact with 3 billion people. We will offer new and different ways to shop the IKEA product range – online, in remote locations and in city centres. We will introduce smaller store formats and offer a wide range of flexible and affordable services,” says Torbjörn Lööf, Inter IKEA Group CEO.
During the coming years, Falabella – a new IKEA franchisee – will bring IKEA products to South America for the first time. Soon customers can shop IKEA products in Chile, Columbia and Peru. IKEA will also come to Mexico, Estonia, Ukraine, Puerto Rico, Oman, Luxembourg, Macau and the Philippines. 15 retail locations are planned in FY19. This includes IKEA Bahrain – a new market – which opened in September.
Later this year IKEA is launching a new initiative to engage more closely with the many people. “We’re inviting customers, designers, engineers and more to join our new co-create IKEA community. Together we can contribute to the daily development and long term-innovation of the IKEA product range. In the meantime, the IKEA-funded future living lab SPACE10 is working with an ever-growing network of forward-thinking partners to research and design innovative solutions for future challenges,” says Torbjörn.
