Ikea is a world renowned company of ready to assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home textiles. It is based out of Agunnaryd, Sweden. It was initially started by Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA in 1943 which is also the full form of the acronym of IK in IKEA. INGKA Holding B.V. is the company which owns the IKEA Group which handles its retail, centers, customer satisfaction and many other services a MNC needs. IKEA Brand is owned and manages by Inter IKEA Systems B.V. which is owned by Inter IKEA Holding B.V.
It has made its presence in India and has planned growing its root here and opened recently in Navi Mumbai in December 2020.
The main USP of this multinational conglomerate is that its furniture are DIY – Do It Yourself. Which means that one has to assemble themselves and will not get it ready made. The pros of this is
- Modern designs which are eco- friendly.
- Less packaging cost because of less surface area, thus less time in assembling and packaging.
- Less costly in shipping and keeping.
- Less land needed for showcasing and storing
- Less cost in handling and pro- curing
- Benefits the buyer to buy and shift.
- Gives an experience to make something out of unassembled parts
- Less costly for the buyer as well.
- Online shopping is possible of the same,
- And since it is detachable, long term uses of the furniture increas- es since transporting and customizing gets easy.
IKEA has been sourcing from In- dia for over 35 years with over 50 suppliers, 45,000 direct employ- ees, and 400,000 people in the extended supply chain producing for IKEA stores worldwide. Thus it started its in-house store in Hy- derabad and Navi Mumbai, Hy- derabad being its first and Navi Mumbai being second. IKEA also plans to open two small stores in Mumbai prior to which it already has online presence in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Pune.
Features of IKEA Navi Mumbai are as follows:
- It is situated in Village Turbhe and Pawana TTC Industrial area, Thane-Belapur Road, Navi Mum- bai, Maharashtra
- It oprates from Monday to Sun- day from 11am to 9 pm.
- Registration is required post Covid for weekend.
- Website is – Click Here
- The store employs close to 1200 employees out of which 50 % are women, 40 % are from Navi Mumbai and 70 % from Turbhe and Ghansoli.
- It has the largest kids play area, named Småland (Swedish for small lands) amongst all the IKEA stores worldwide.
- Three storey structure , including smaland, restaurant, café, market hall, furniture showroom, self service warehouse, external warehouse, cash register, return and exchange area and two level parking ground with electronic chargers.
- Staff wearing Tee shirts of yellow and blue colour and “Hej” on the back meaning hello in Sweden.
- Rooms are theme based and personalized acoording to profession usage age gender etc.
- Sleep mattress testing place is also there.
IKEA has some basic features in But the features of IKEA India involves it’s designer Akansha Deo, who is experimenting with the loops of the fabric to give more fuzzy feeling to its user and that she is doing by groundwork. She started experimenting on different yarns and wool with Indian artisans and combined tradition textiles with other textiles to form rugs for the collection LOKALT.
She is using the traditional printing, dyeing, frame looms and said, “I wanted to use the traditional ‘punja’ loom technique, but create a very graphic, playful and mod- ern expression with the textiles. I played with different scales and colors with the techniques to cre- ate an exaggerated 3D effect.”
Punja is a traditional manual loom technique where the artisan sits in front of a vertical frame loom and keeps the design in front of them and then uses a tool with metallic fingers to beat the weft into the warp tightly. Akansha was also in- spired by the traditional embroi- dery ‘Kantha’
Also in 2019, Ikea announced the goal to convert all virgin polyester into recycled textile by the end of 2020. At the end of 2020 IKEA converted approx. 100,000 metric tons virgin polyester to recycles products, which puts IKEA as one of the leaders of converting virgin to recycled polyester in terms of volumes.
Polyester is one of the most widely used fibres in the world, accounting roughly half of the fibres used and 80% of the synthetic fibres.
IKEA’s stores are naturally culture based. The stores keep on changing due to its location and profitability. Many outlets have been closed or reinvented due to occurring loss and have menus or furniture according to the country and taste of the people. 5% of IKEA’s sales come from Food. Since it is a new entrant after Covid, its performance is unpredictable because, as we sit more at our houses and less outside it can see a great success but on the same hand as economy and jobs of people are recovering at a slower pace, expenditure from houses are predicted less.
One cordially invites IKEA in India with open arms with a hope it will create beautiful homes and memories also will create employment and growth in economy by many means.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA
https://www.ikea.com/in/en/stores/mumbai/navi/
https://www.ikea.com/in/en/this-is-ikea/newsroom/ikea-toopen-its-navi-mumbai-storeon-december-18-with-fullhealth-and-safety-measures
BY:
Ragini Gupta
Trainee Editor at TVC
P.G Student, Department of Textile Science and Apparel Design SNDT Women’s University
