Hyderabad: Over 2,000,000 customers visited IKEA’s first India store here during the financial year 2019-20 (Sept to Aug), said the Swedish home furnishing worldwide on Wednesday. The Group calculates a financial year from September 1 to August 31.
The footfall is a lot slower than the 7,000,000 the organization was expecting when it opened the store in 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly influenced the numbers.
IKEA India, a division of the Ingka Group, opened its first retail furniture store at Hyderabad in August 2018. The organization officials had said in February a year ago that the footfall was 5,000,000 per year against 7,000,000 they were initially taking a gander at. They, in any case, included that they sold more in spite of the lower than foreseen footfall.
CEO and CSO, Dwindle Betzel, IKEA’s India said in an announcement on Wednesday that they are lowering costs for several articles to turn out to be much more affordable for customers.
He included: “Throughout the year, two million-plus buyers visited our Hyderabad store and 25 million-plus people visited us online. As more people have been required to stay home, the interest in home furnishing has increased and online shopping grew significantly.”
IKEA India opened online stores in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad in 2019.
Mumbai is the primary IKEA market to originate online without physical stores.
Peter stated: “We look forward to a great and positive FY-2021 with our new IKEA store and also smaller formats coming up in Mumbai and proceed to establish a strong omnichannel presence in our markets.”
The Ingka Group declared solid worldwide retail sales of 35.2 billion euros for the financial year 2020, in spite of the economic and public wellbeing challenges presented by COVID-19. It had announced sales of 36.7 billion euros in FY-19.
For a long time during the year, Ingka Group needed to close 75 per cent of the IKEA stores it operates over the world because of lockdowns.
The organization moreover reported a progression of wide-running duties to help and secure the wellbeing and work of those influenced by the pandemic. It incorporated a 26-million-euro crisis relief of in-kind donations to help communities just as offering help to IKEA co-workers by securing pay stability, expanding parental leave and offering adaptable work arrangements.
The organization has chosen to restore the government stimulus support it got for co-worker’s wages at the start of the pandemic as the business recovered quicker than anticipated.
CEO Ingka Group, Jesper Brodin stated: “During the last six months we managed to quickly adapt to the new needs of our customers and even if our values have been put to test it’s obvious that our purpose is what unites us. We are determined to build a better life for the people in a time when a home has never been more essential.”
IKEA’s crisis community support in India during COVID-19 included giving 4,000,000 meals, 20,000 goods and 1.1 million face masks/PPE with UNICEF.
