Ikea expands style and square footage - new unit in College Park, MD

DSN Retailing Today, June 23, 2003 by Mike Duff

COLLEGE PARK, MD. -- As if its opening wasn't an important enough milestone in an of itself, Ikea's new College Park store exemplifies just how far the retailer has come from its roots as a seller of RTA alternatives to case goods and kitchen sets.

The College Park Ikea unit, which opened on June 18, is the company's 16th store in the United States and the first in some time that isn't a replacement unit. The mammoth 371,000-square-foot store is the first step in a planned 50-unit, 10-year North American expansion that will include about nine additional U.S. units by the end of this year. The new College Park unit is double the space of many U.S. Ikea stores and is the chain's second-largest in the country All five of the new U.S. stores Ikea plans to open by the end of August this year are big, with the U.S. units weighing in--using the international standard-at 32,800 square meters for College Park and 33,800 square meters for Paramus, N.J. In addition to a fifth new store, set for East Palo Alto, Calif, as a 27,000-square-meter unit and opening on Aug. 27, the company is opening four replacement stores. They, too, will have larger footprints, said Ikea spokesman Clive Cash-man. "We want to be able to do everything we have planned in those stores," h e said. "In all the new and replacement stores, we have five model home areas, for example, except for Costa Mesa, which is a replacement store, where we have six." The Costa Mesa replacement store is 28,800 square meters.

Two new Canadian units, which bring Ikea's total in that country to 11, are 27,870 square meters in the Montreal market and 30,000 square meters in Vaughn near Toronto. They represent the fourth- and second-largest in Canada.

Additional space permits Ikea to highlight the scope of its design. While the retailer still features funky and young styles that defined its early years of development, Ikea has built upon its approach to style and now offers more mature, yet still casual, product lines.

In addition to the five "model home" displays, which include kitchen, living room, bedroom and bath set ups, the College Park locations features 55 room settings. In both, Ikea can demonstrate to shoppers how products may be assembled to create functional, stylish solutions. For example, for consumers who have moved beyond futons but who may still be living in limited space, Ikea offers a leather sofa that has a storage area below the seating piece.

During a June 10 store tour, store manager Paget Ingham described the College Park location as "state of the art" for its integration of the latest merchandising ideas Ikea is implementing. In house-wares, for instance, lighting has been greatly expanded and includes a wide range of applications from track units to tiny bedside lamps. Candles also has been revisited. "We have turned it around to make it more part of home decor," she said, adding that a reset and simple product

addition can help upgrade and reposition department light candles. "We just added scented tealights," she said.

While Ikea made its reputation as a source of furniture for singles and newly married couples, the retailer is underscoring its commitment to families in general and children in particular with an expanded range of bedding, furniture and accessories, including toys, or "developmental products" as Ikea prefers calling them. Everything is scaled to fit a kid's perspective, re-emphasizing that Ikea is looking to make itself more attractive to a wider range of shoppers than ever before.