Everyone’s favourite Swedish furniture store has been making big moves in the UK lately. IKEA finally opened its long-awaited Oxford Street flagship back in May, launched its first UK high street restaurant at the end of last year, announced its first ever store in Brighton and is being celebrated in an upcoming exhibition of its pattern designs in Edinburgh. And there’s more to come.
As part of its mission bring stores closer to where people live and work (gone are the days when an IKEA trip had to be an entire day out), IKEA has opened a brand new compact store in Harlow, Essex. At just over 3,700 square metres, the smaller format aims to give shoppers a simpler and faster experience.
Just like the large IKEAs we’re all used to, there are showrooms to wander around, planning services, a section selling secondhand home furnishing and, obviously, a cafe selling those infamous meatballs to eat in or take away. You’ll still have access to all 12,000 items in IKEAs range, either to get delivered to your home or or collected from the store with free next-day collection. Customers can also bring in their own preloved IKEA items to exchange for store credit.
IKEA Harlow is open for business from 10am to 8pm Mondays to Saturdays and 10.30am to 4.30pm on Sundays.
Peter Jelkeby, CEO and CSO, IKEA UK & Ireland, said: ‘The opening of IKEA Harlow marks an exciting milestone as we explore new ways to bring IKEA closer to our customers. We are opening our doors just over 100 days after acquiring the lease to the site, having made use of the existing structure to get our store ready at pace.’
Harlow’s new IKEA is the first of three new-format compact stores from the brand. Similar small IKEAs are also set to open in Norwich and Chester later this year after IKEA acquired old Homebase sites back in April. It’s also opening new ‘Plan and Order Points’ in Dundee and York in the coming months.
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