IKEA’s U.S. Success Story Started at This Pennsylvania Store in 1985

The Swedish furniture giant recently announced its largest-ever investment in its U.S. operations, 37 years after launching in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.

By WSJ Staff
April 25, 2023
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IKEA announced last week that it was making its largest-ever investment in new American stores, betting on strong U.S. demand for its flat-pack furniture.

An IKEA store in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 2020. Photo: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg News

Ingka Holding, the biggest owner and operator of IKEA stores, said it would spend 2 billion euros, the equivalent of $2.19 billion, opening 17 new U.S. locations over the next three years.

The new store openings—to be focused in the southern states of the U.S., where IKEA has relatively little exposure—will create 2,000 new jobs, the company said.

How did IKEA get here?

IKEA was founded in Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943. After expanding operations there in the 1950s, IKEA stores opened in Australia, Canada, and many other countries throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Mr. Kamprad visits a store in Finland in 2007. Photo: Lehtikuva/Shutterstock

Mr. Kamprad had traveled to the U.S. in the early ‘60s, where he learned about distribution and the benefits of large parking lots.

He visited 50 different companies, but was impressed by only a few. He wrote that he “learnt just as much from the companies’ mistakes over there.”

IKEA began operations in the U.S. in 1985, when the retailer opened its first U.S. store in Plymouth Meeting, Pa.

IKEA

IKEA spent almost $2 million to promote the store’s opening, the New York Times reported in 1986.

IKEA

The store initially attracted 150,000 customers a week, the Times reported. By the following year, that number had fallen considerably, but the store still drew long lines, it said.

IKEA

In 1986, IKEA opened its second U.S. store in Woodbridge, Va. While the first IKEA relocated to Conshohocken, Pa., in 2003, IKEA Woodbridge still operates today.

IKEA Woodbridge in 2020. Photo: Sipa USA/AP

There are currently 51 IKEA stores and two so-called “plan-and-order points” in the U.S., not counting two new locations due to open in San Francisco and Arlington, Va., this summer.

Plan and order points are a relatively new IKEA format where customers can plan the layout of their bedroom, kitchen or living room with the help of in-store consultants and place orders for IKEA products.

The new locations announced last week are set to include eight stores and nine plan and order points.

Jeffrey Greenberg/UCG/UIG/Getty

The U.S. is Ingka’s second-largest market after Germany, said Tolga Öncü, Ingka’s head of retail, though it will likely become the biggest as a result of the coming expansion.

Spencer Platt/Getty

Cover, additional photos by: IKEA
Produced by: Brian Patrick Byrne

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