It is worth noting that while everyone is busy with their e-commerce sales and closing down their retail stores around the world, IKEA has proved that they are doing something right as they have been successful in expanding their retail stores all over the world and it is also seen that they have a business in furniture which means that people like to feel their products before ordering them. IKEA has also made a good decision of letting people feel all of their products but they keep the option of letting them order online from inside their store as well so that they can get delivery at their doorstep.
This has also increased the credibility of IKEA in the eyes of people who are not too bothered about ordering online as they feel overwhelmed with the entire process. Now, you must already know that IKEA has a robust system of checkout and everything in order. But they have still gone ahead and purchased a software company related to warehousing which is named as Made4Net. It is worth noting that this purchase has been made by IKEA stores’ owner Ingka and now it will be owned by Ingka’s investments division known as Ingka Investments.
IKEA released a statement saying that they had to make this purchase “in order to improve IKEA’s warehouse and logistics operations as shoppers increasingly demand next-day or same-day delivery”. One pain point that we have seen customers have is that IKEA takes a lot of time to deliver their products since they outsource the delivery process and don’t have a delivery firm of their own such as Amazon or others. This is the reason why they can’t control the timing of their delivery. Head of Ingka Group, Tolga Oncu, said “Our business currently requires a better fulfillment operations system with more accurate data that better supports handling for our customers,”. It is worth noting that IKEA is looking to expand more in its second-biggest market after Germany that is US with opening of eight new big stores and nine smaller stores in the next few months as well as upgrading existing stores.
