By sematikotemo
IKEA is planning to cut over 7.500 jobs around the globe over the next two years. The reason for this is that the whole retail industry is changing. If IKEA wants to stay relevant they have to adapt to the growing demands of the customers. More and more people prefer online shopping and smaller stores nearby, rather than huge stores located few places. The idea behind this is to adapt to the customer needs, and will most likely benefit both IKEA and the customers.
IKEA’s vision is to make design for everyone, or as they call it: “democratic design”. As they adapt to the market they can use this vision to their advantage. By concentrating on online retailing and smaller stores nearby towns they will make IKEA more available for the majority. Even though this means several huge warehouses will be closed and several thousand’s of people will lose their jobs, they said to the British newspaper Independent that the reversal will lead into over 11.000 new jobs within the new stores. For me this is quite shocking. People are often frightened about how they think the adaption to online industries is making less jobs.
Between 2009 and 2016 the digital design industry grew 85% in turnover. In 7 years the turnover almost doubled! These numbers says something about the increasing demand of being available online. For comparison IKEA warehouses had 957 million visits in 2018, while their internet page had over 2.5 billion visitors. Even though the online visits is by far larger, this numbers shows that there still is a need for the customers to visit physical stores. I think that when people are shopping furniture they want to see it physically to get an exact opinion if it fits for their home. Buying furniture is a big deal, because its something you will see and use daily.
IKEA have tried to adapt to the ever increasing customer expectations trough three different types of distributions and several other opportunities, like renting cars and trailers. Still there is quite limited access to warehouses for some markets. Therefore they will open smaller IKEA stores and temporary outlets in more urban cities. I think this is a brilliant idea because it gives access to markets where IKEA isn’t well established yet. Besides that they can give access to those who lives in smaller cities where its far away to the closest IKEA warehouse.
Even though the market is in change, I think there still is some needs to see and test furniture before you buy them. If IKEA only launched smaller stores it would limit their assortment quite a bit. To decorate your home is a though job. Everything needs to fit, and it could be expensive if you aren’t happy about your choices. I feel the online shop helps a lot by letting you pick some alternatives before you go to the store.
Making sense of art and design industries 