
Visualisation of the expansion of IKEA - davidbarker
http://mike-barker.com/ikea/
======
flexie
Call me boring but IKEA is one of the greatest shops I know. I'd really like
to own shares in IKEA.

I don't know any other furniture store that comes close to having decent
design and decent quality combined with decent prices and immediate delivery.
Most other cheap end furniture stores have crappy design, lousy quality.

As of today, if you want to buy a sofa, IKEA is one of the very few furniture
stores where you can actually pick up the sofa right away. It's also one of
the very few furniture stores that doesn't promote a few items and then hikes
up the prices of other items. Prices are consistently average or sort of low
so that customers trust that they are not being screwed.

They are also great at having products for all price points. Even if you don't
buy that sofa you are still likely to spend some money on napkins or towels or
the meatballs.

And imaging being able to test a new product or pricing or design in one or
two of your stores that you know to have average customers and then roll out
the product all over the world.

~~~
guard-of-terra
To counter your opinion:

Most of the Ikea furniture we owned lost form in a few years: Think sliding
sections that stuck, aluminium tubes that deformed after some use.

I'm not sure about price but the experience was subpar. Won't buy something
expensive from them, like a sofa.

We still enjoy Ikea as a source of smaller kitchenware and the like. And food
is nice as well.

And most of the furniture in my room were custom-built. It's not that
expensive even, and allowed us to make a very smart and integrated use of the
space we've got. Build times aren't great tho.

~~~
buckbova
It's fine for what it is and would only buy for cheap office furniture.

My last home had an IKEA kitchen that was a little over 10 years old with IKEA
cabinets and flooring and what not. It was garbage. Cabinets surrounding the
sink base had turned into deteriorated cardboard from contact with water. The
flooring, wood laminate, felt like walking on plastic. The cabinets sat on
plastic stilts. The whole thing was cheap and lousy.

I tore that all out before I moved in a stick of furniture.

I did salvage some for garage shelving.

~~~
enjo
I recently left a 7 year old Ikea cabinets. Was in perfect shape, far better
than the previous places I'd lived (the hardware they put on that stuff is
fantastic). The countertop wasn't Ikea and the flooring was an engineered
hardwood, also not Ikea.

Still I'd put those cabinets in my home again in a heartbeat.

------
arrrg
I really didn’t know that Germany was and still is such an important market
for IKEA. It’s the country with the most stores (eight more than the US, but
Germany has less than a third of the inhabitants of the US and is much more
densely populated).

It looks like some smaller European countries might have a higher store per
person count (Netherlands, for example), but of all the larger countries
Germany has the most stores.

I wonder why IKEA expanded into Germany early and hasn’t lost steam since.

~~~
naterator
What surprised me more was that the Canary Islands was one of the first
markets for IKEA (before 1985). I mean, the Canary Islands before Madrid or
New York? WTF? I can only assume they were using as a test market, like Kansas
City for Google Fiber, but still... wow!

~~~
rickisen
Well there are a lot of swedish stuff in the Canry islands. It's probably the
number one holiday spot for Swedes. Or at least it was back then. Just walking
down the beach there you'll hear swedish everywhere. And there are plenty of
swedes who owns a house there...

------
waterside81
Interesting factoid I learned yesterday at an IKEA in Toronto from an
employee. The cost of returns/exchanges in their North American markets is 6X
the international average because North American customers expect to
return/exchange regardless of the rules or restrictions IKEA puts in place.

~~~
yardie
In some places consumer protection laws are non-existent. Even in the US some
places will try to talk you out of it (ever try to return something in
Chinatown, NYC). I'm surprised it isn't higher for their European stores. The
EU consumer protection laws are much stronger than the ones in the US, as
Apple has found out.

~~~
tormeh
Yeah, in some ways they are, but the rules for returning stuff are usually
that the thing must be defect in some obvious way. That you're unsatisfied is
usually not enough. Even in the case (like online shopping) when you can
return stuff, it has to be unopened and unused.

The rules on how long your product has to work are better, though.

~~~
gknoy
Given that sometimes the only way to tell that an Ikea item is defective is to
open it and try to put it together ("Hey, these holes don't line up, and that
board is warped..."), a requirement to be unopened an unused would be
ludicrous.

I love the Ikea pieces we have. As someone else said, they're far better than
other put-it-together-yourself pieces I've ever bought. However, quality has
been flaky. I bought 4x of a shelving unit (Trofast), and two of them had a
single piece where the holes were not aligned correctly. (The first one, I
thought maybe it was just me, but it was clear after putting together two more
that #1 and #4 were defective.) Fortunately, it was a different piece in each,
so I was able to cobble together three pieces of furniture and return the
fourth.

They were very gracious and allowed me to return it despite the defect being
only something you could tell when you actually tried to put it together.
Since I was there with my kids, I would have been extremely unhappy had they
asked me to demonstrate its failure. ;)

~~~
Cederfjard
> Given that sometimes the only way to tell that an Ikea item is defective is
> to open it and try to put it together ("Hey, these holes don't line up, and
> that board is warped..."), a requirement to be unopened an unused would be
> ludicrous.

Judging from the wording of tormeh's comment, and if the regulations and
customs are similar where s/he is located to those here in Sweden, unopened
and unused was meant to refer to cases where you actually CAN return stuff no
questions asked, such as when shopping through mail order or online (sometimes
stores give you this opportunity anyway, but it's not something that's
required by law or ubiquitous). It's not a given that you can always buy
something, try it out and then return it if it's not explicitly stated.

If you're returning something because it was obviously defective when you
bought it, then naturally it doesn't matter if you've opened the box.

------
antman
I am very happy that the largest european "charitable foundation"[1] is
featured on HN. Too bad it doesn't do any charitable work. Decent products and
decent customer service are important, raising capital by avoiding taxes
appears to be more important. [1] [http://boingboing.net/2009/08/26/ikea-is-
owned-by-a-c.html](http://boingboing.net/2009/08/26/ikea-is-owned-by-a-c.html)

~~~
Einstalbert
As a young 20-something moving out into a place of my own in this day and age,
I considered their cheap furniture more of a charity than anything else. I
guess a soup kitchen would have been the next thing available to someone in my
"salary" range.

------
jballanc
Nice visualization, but it's missing one of the newest locations
(understandably, as it just opened on April 22nd): Bodrum, Turkey!

What's interesting about this location is that it is, essentially, show room
only. There's a smaller warehouse, but they don't stock the full line of
items. For most items you will have to place a delivery order. I don't know if
this is the first of it's kind, but it is a really interesting adaptation that
Ikea has made to the market.

Even though Bodrum has experienced significant growth as of late, it is still
primarily a seasonal resort town with the population tripling or even
quadrupling during the summer months. It definitely wouldn't make sense to
spend the money on a full-size warehouse that would only be used at full
capacity 4 months of the year, but at the same time this is a market that
seems very ripe for Ikea (many people furnishing summer homes probably aren't
interested in premium furnishings). So kudos to Ikea for continuing to adapt
to the market.

------
yardie
Why nothing in the African and South American continent. Morocco is a
perfectly viable, stable economy. I would envision the same for Tunisia,
Egypt, Ghana, Mozambique and South Africa. Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil
(import laws are nuts) and Uruguay as well.

I wonder what goes into deciding when a country is suitable to have an IKEA?
Is it corruption, stability, economy?

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Maybe import laws are a factor, but most likely they haven't entered Brazil
because the local competition [1] wouldn't make it profitable.

[1] [http://www.tokstok.com.br/](http://www.tokstok.com.br/)

~~~
tellarin
IKEA would blow Tokstok and the like out of the water in both quality and
price.

Besides crazy import laws, what I see as the major blocker there is that
Brazilians are not very fond of self-service stores and of having to carry
their purchased stuff home and assemble it themselves.

Of course IKEA could try what they do in places like China, where they partner
with a local company for delivery/assemble. But then maybe the price for that
service would be a factor.

------
crussmann
Very surprising how long it took them to enter the U.S. market, especially
given that they were in North America (Canada) long before.

It'd be interesting to know more about how that decision was made, and also if
this has shaped the general perception of Ikea in Canada vs. The States.

~~~
madeofpalk
I was surprised to see Sydney, Australia as one of the first international
stores.

~~~
nisse72
And 40 years later, still no IKEA in New Zealand.

------
snake_plissken
It's interesting that the stores on the Canary Islands opened so early
compared to all of the other ones. On the one hand, they are islands so it
makes sense to open a store like Ikea where you can make purchases from a
large variety furniture and household items. On the other hand, you have to
send via a container ship all of the goods to stock the stores; how often
would you need to re-stock? How fast could you restock? how often could you
update the offerings?

~~~
pchristensen
Well, everything has to be shipped there, so Ikea probably has a cost and
speed advantage b/c of the flat-pack designs. Shipping has to be a much
smaller % of total costs compared to pre-assembled furniture.

------
TomatoTomato
Washington DC (Woodbridge) store point is placed in Michigan

Edit: and when you go backwards past/before Detroit, it removes both Detroit
and the Woodbridge points

~~~
TomatoTomato
Edit2: Problem is with duplicate/wrong lat-long data attributes. Same issue
with Heerlen/Haarlem and Boston (Stoughton)/Southampton.

Edit3: London (Wembley), Hamburg (Schnelsen), Milan (Carugate), Beijing (Chao
Yang), St. Peterburg (Parnas), Ulm, and Samara aren't working at all as well.

------
tonypace
It's missing the only two locations I've ever been to: one closed (Halifax)
and one just opened (Taichung). Given that no dots disappeared, I suspect
there were other closures that aren't shown.

~~~
mrweasel
There's another one that's a little funny. Ikea opened in Aalborg Denmark in
the 80s and closed again in the 90s. That store isn't shown, it's only the
reopening in 2008 that's listed.

My point is: "Ikea stores fails too"

------
djb_hackernews
3 stores on the teeny tiny Canary Islands? What's going on down there?

~~~
allworknoplay
It's so weird, I noticed that too and came here to comment. Two of them were
there before there were ANY in Spain. So confusing.

~~~
jpatokal
The Canaries were (and may still be) the #1 tourist destination for
Scandinavians escaping the long winter.

------
encoderer
I noticed at least one error -- The "Washington (Woodbridge)" location drops a
pin in Michigan not Virginia.

------
Cyph0n
First Arab city to get a store was Jeddah in '83\. It was shortly followed by
one in Kuwait City in '84\. I was expecting a much later date actually.

------
omnibrain
It would be nice if one could click on one of the dots and the site showed
what store it is. (I'm using Chrome 33, if that's supposed to work)

~~~
croisillon
I agree, I'm on Firefox and wanted to check some locations by
clicking/hovering it and it only says "store".

------
wf
You can add Kansas City to your visualization in 2014!

~~~
hospadam
And St. Louis as well.

~~~
rhodin
Fall 2015 I've heard

~~~
jgoewert
Yep, End of year 2015. The sign for KC passed through STL last month and
caused a commotion of people thinking it was the STL one. I've been driving up
to Chicago to hit IKEA and Fry's and have really been waiting for this one to
open.

------
fuzzythinker
To make it even more useful, store name/city can be bubbled on hover on dot.
But since the stores can be very concentrated at the end, one or combination
of the following can to be done:

\- combine dots into larger dots, and/or with different colors, or 3D-ize them
if they touch one another.

\- magnify europe into empty ocean space.

\- scale map according to screen width.

------
ojbyrne
This seems to omit the first IKEA in North America, which opened in Dartmouth,
Nova Scotia, in 1975, perhaps because it closed in 1988.

[http://askville.amazon.com/IKEA-stores-USA-compared-years-
ag...](http://askville.amazon.com/IKEA-stores-USA-compared-years-
ago/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=15199694)

------
asciimo
> but IKEA has been global from its' early days

I don't think I've seen this flavor of apostrophe misuse before.

------
thedays
Great visualisation of the opening of IKEA stores - doesn't appear to show the
closure of stores though which could be an interesting addition (perhaps by
changing the dot to another colour like black and then extinguishing it?)

The first 3 IKEA stores which opened in Sydney - Gordon (not Homebush Bay as
is shown on this map), Blacktown and Moore Park - have all since closed -
apparently due to a lack of car parking spaces.
[http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ikea-plans-
sec...](http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/ikea-plans-second-mega-
sydney-store-20090510-az06.html)

------
jackalope
It frustrates me that even as they expand, they seem to have a distribution
model that is one-way-only. If your local store doesn't have an item, you can
locate the stores that have it, but they won't send it to the store nearest
you. You can order items online, but you can't pick them up at a local store
to save on the outrageously high shipping fees. This is even more frustrating
when the item is unavailable online, but is sitting in another store 200 miles
away. Can't they toss it on a truck for redistribution?

~~~
cpwright
The stores are franchises, so it makes sense that they won't ship it from
store to store. I can even sort of see why they might not want to ship a
single item to a store; given that they might want to batch these things up
and skip the middle step of a distribution center.

I think they should probably at least try to figure out site-to-store or
equivalent if they want to expand their online presence (maybe there isn't
enough profit in it if they have to put up with distribution inefficiencies).

~~~
bjourne
_Technically_ franchises. Only a minority of stores have external owners and
most of them are owned by the Ikea corporation.

~~~
calgoo
Exactly... The main stores, (yellow and blue buildings) are the normal ones
which are owned and operated by IKEA Corp.

------
pacofvf
IKEA should come to Mexico, furniture is really expensive here or low quality,
if you want to save money and want quality you have to drive kms away to a
carpenter town.

~~~
emilioolivares
Totally agree, we've had to deal with such crappy expensive furniture for too
long! Saludos.

------
mncolinlee
I can't speak to the quality of IKEA's items because I find that they have the
store design from Hell. It's a labyrinth that inevitably snags significant
others to waste an entire afternoon in a furniture store. Good luck convincing
them to use the shortcuts. I prefer store designs that encourage a shorter,
more purposeful shopping experience to one that makes me worry how far away
the restrooms and my car are.

~~~
jakebellacera
The store layout isn't created by accident, IKEA wants you to see as many
products as possible so they can capture those impulse purchases.

------
c0nsumer
Something is wrong with this. A dot appears in Southeast Michigan in 1985 when
"Philadelphia (Conshohocken)" scrolls past. We're not anywhere near there, and
the first IKEA in this area (excluding stuff in Canada, a couple hours away)
opened in 2006.

What's interesting is that if I go to 2006 and find "Detroit (Canton)" and
scrub back and forth this dot disappears and reappears.

------
lkrubner
They had 6 stores in Canada before they opened their first store in the USA? I
wonder what made Canada such an attractive market for them (or what made the
USA unattractive). They got into the USA in 1985, when the USA currency hit
its post 1973 (floating) exchange rate peak. I wonder if the high exchange
rate was a plus or minus from IKEAs point of view?

~~~
chintanp
Good observation, was also curious to know this.

~~~
sbisker
Not sure if it's what happened here, but - companies will sometimes "test the
waters" in Canada and iron out the kinks before coming to the US. If they
screw up, it's on a much smaller stage, and it can be fixed more quietly.

------
tragomaskhalos
Interesting content, but:

I didn't like the way the list of stores on the RHS seemed to be out of synch
with the map, until I realised I needed to be looking at the _top_ of the
list, where the items were turning yellow.

A better design IMO would have a highlighted letterbox in the _middle_ of that
list, with stores adding to the map as they hit that.

------
simoes
This is a really great and simple visualization, I definitely enjoyed seeing
all the little dots go kerplunk :-)

One minor issue is that I think your Boston (Stoughton) store GPS coords might
be wrong. Scrolling through I noticed the point was dropped in the UK
somewhere, might be a confusion with Stoughton, Leicestershire.

------
wluu
There are some missing ones.

It says the first IKEA store in Melbourne opened in 2003 at Richmond. This is
incorrect.

There was one in Moorabbin which closed its' doors in 2005 and had been open
for quite a number of years prior to that. I have items that I purchased there
that still work.

And I'm surprised they never opened a store in NZ.

~~~
jpatokal
Given the rate at which they're expanding in Oz (Canberra is getting one next
year!), it's probably a matter of time:

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9776365/Renewed-h...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/9776365/Renewed-
hope-for-NZ-Ikea)

------
indlebe
I'm wondering why lists in 1977: Toronto (New York)? Is this a typo?

~~~
cpwright
North York, not New York. York is a city near Toronto.

~~~
personZ
"York is a city near Toronto."

Just to clarify, both York and North York are now a part of the amalgamated
city of Toronto (1998), and do not exist as distinct jurisdictions.
Colloquially people still refer to North York, but seldom refer to York as a
distinct area. It's just Toronto.

On this same line of British names in North America, Fort York was the British
military fort in Toronto

------
johnward
I'm still trying to figure out how there was an IKEA in my area in the early
90's yet I didn't really know about or what IKEA was until sometime within the
last 5 years.

------
josephjrobison
This is the craziest succession of store location openings I've ever seen -
Canary Islands before the UK or US or France!?

------
_Adam
Is anyone else having issues with the site? I'm using Chrome, and some of the
text blocks are truncated on the left side.

------
jimmyrocks
The first one in the US was Philadelphia (Plymouth Meeting). It later moved to
Conshohocken.

------
cju
A minor error: first store near Paris in 1983 is "Evry", not "Evryevry"

------
stephengoodwin
Anyone know why Vancouver was the first expansion point of Ikea outside into
North America?

------
tormeh
Nothing in India or Brazil. Why?

------
callesgg
I was expecting somthing more that a proportionally space line with text.

------
fauria
Comment from a Galant table, sitting on a Markus chair.

------
filvdg
Why no stores in South America ? import restrictions?

~~~
Htsthbjig
I suppose it is because 2 facts:

1- Bigger than 100% import duties on some of those countries.

2- Very small middle class, who are the buyers of IKEA.

I have lived in Brazil. Only two classes there: The ultra wealthy and the
poor. I was ultra wealthy there, but live is worth nothing there.

Probably Chile(too far), and in the future Colombia are the only places they
could expand.

------
sesm
Typo spotted: St.Peterburg instead of St.Petersburg

------
wallzz
it seems that Africa has a lot to do in order to change the image that the
others still has on the continent.

~~~
erbo
Cairo got one in 2013; they're getting there. Perhaps somewhere in South
Africa next?

