Throughout its history, it has focused on offering its products through its official sales channels: its physical stores and its own websites, although for some years it has thought about including part of its catalog in a marketplace, Y this bet is about to bear fruit.
Ikea will launch a virtual store to sell its products through Tmall
Ikea is about to sell its products through third parties: l in the marketplace dedicated to B2C commerce of : Tmall. In this eCommerce that will be integrated with the Ikea participation program, they will offer more than 3,800 popular products and furniture from the Swedish giant.
For now, the Ikea Tmall store is only available to consumers of Shanghai and the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui, however, eCommerce is expected to gradually expand its coverage to other locations in China in the near future.
“Ikea is the world’s leading retailer of home furnishings, and is loved by many consumers in China” assured , president of Tmall and Taobao. “It’s very exciting for us. help Ikea explore new online channels and allow more Chinese consumers to buy their products more conveniently.”
And this is a big change for Ikea’s business model, which has remained for the last 77 yearshowever, the company is aware that it must adopt this transformation.
Ikea’s commitment is to boost its digital channels
Despite the fact that until now its products have not been sold directly through other channels, such as Amazon, the company knows that it is missing the opportunity to reach a large number of consumers who cannot access your products in other waysor that they should face the challenge of leaving their city to reach a distant physical store and transport furniture back.
With these consumers in mind, Ikea has invested heavily in recent years to boost your digital channelsoffering new retail sales formats, including smaller outlets closer to their customers in urban centers, as well as a mixed-use shopping center.
“The launch of the new virtual store on Tmall is really exciting, and we believe that will complement existing sales channelslike our Ikea stores and eCommerce as we get closer to our customers in China”, said , retail operations manager for Ikea Group.
In China, Ikea operates 30 physical stores, two concept stores and one small-format store.. As for online channels, the Swedish giant has its website, an application and now its new flagship store on Tmall.
For his part, , managing director of Ikea Systems BV added that “At Ikea we are always curious about new experiences, as well as finding new and better ways to meet and interact with our customers.”
In this way, the new collaboration with Alibaba will offer you a great opportunity to test how to manage a marketplaceand explore how it can fit in with the brand’s existing infrastructure, supply chain operations and customer experience.
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