Ikea Canada announced May 14 that it plans to open what it calls “pick-up-point locations” in London, Ontario and Quebec City by the end of 2015.
The news comes five months after Ikea Canada president Stefan Sjöstrand told Business in Vancouver that he envisioned opening up to 10 of these smaller stores across Canada within the year.
No other cities have yet been named for the smaller stores but Sjöstrand told BIV that at least one of the stores would be “on the West Coast.”
Each store will hire between 20 and 25 workers.
The stores allow customers who have shopped online or at an Ikea store to pick up their products closer to where they live. Customers will also be able to buy one of 99 products that Ikea will have available for sale.
“The ambition is to make Ikea more accessible to the many Canadians.” Sjöstrand said in the release.
“The pick-up-points allow Ikea to expand quickly into markets that have been identified as having potential, resulting in consumers having easier access to our products.”
Retail analyst and Retail Insider Media Ltd. owner Craig Patterson told BIV in December that he thought it would be “brilliant” for Ikea to open smaller stores in the urban cores of both Vancouver and Toronto.
The brand is well known in both those cities because of the longtime presence of full-size Ikea stores in the suburbs. And both cities have plenty of urban dwellers who do not have cars, he said.
Alas, Ikea said in its release that it intends to open the new smaller stores “in markets where there are currently no stores.”
Ikea has 12 full-size stores across Canada and 361 stores in 50 countries worldwide.
