After a year of extensive revamp, IKEA has officially unveiled its redesigned Soroksár store in Budapest, marking a major step in the company's efforts to adapt its classic stores for the omnichannel retailing.
For the first time ever, the company has merged the Market Hall and the Showroom into one floor, dedicating the other floor for online fulfilment. The new fulfilment area brings under one roof automation and digital solutions that Ingka Group, the biggest IKEA retailer, has tested separately in different markets but never utilised together in one place. The store has already been transformed into IKEA's biggest fulfilment store in Europe and is poised to become the largest fulfilment store in the world by 2026.
Tolga Öncü, Ingka Retail Manager (COO) at IKEA Retail (Ingka Group) said: 'At IKEA, we constantly test and try how to bring our affordable home furnishing offer to more people physically and digitally in the most convenient way. The Soroksár store is a testament to that vision where we went an extra mile to challenge some of our basics to better respond to customer expectations and optimise our presence. It could become a template for many other stores going forward.'
This reinvention of a classic IKEA store strengthens its role as a hub for online orders, handling deliveries faster and not only in Budapest, but from now on to every customer in Hungary. The nearly 50-million EUR investment has doubled the store's online sales capacity to almost a million orders a year and enhanced in-person shopping and e-commerce fulfilment while ensuring a full product range remains available for customers in the store.
'It's really a different kind of experience if you're going through the Soroksár store compared to any other IKEA store around the world. The shopping journey is shorter, more interactive and automated, and it still offers our customers the full IKEA experience – complete with our entire product range, expertise of our co-workers, and of course delicious IKEA food,' says David McCabe, Country Retail Manager & Chief Sustainability Officer for IKEA Czechia, Hungary, and Slovakia.
The store's hybrid model merges digital and physical shopping, offering new ways to interact with the IKEA range. Features like the Rug Projector tool bring products to life, while digital kiosks and the IKEA app simplify browsing, in-store navigation, and post-purchase engagement.
IKEA Soroksár is currently IKEA's largest fulfilment store in Europe. With its combined truck and parcel delivery capabilities, along with the volume of handled goods measured in cubic meters, it is well-positioned to become the largest fulfilment store globally by 2026.
The transformation also includes extensive training programs to reskill and upskill the store's co-workers, ensuring that they utilise the new store in the best way and have more time to face and assist the customer.
More information:
Ikea
www.ingka.com