The Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA have seen annual sales increase by 11.3% compared to last year. The company has also announced total sales of £1.41 billion for the financial year ending 31st august 2014.
The increase is due to a strong growth in online and children‘s department sales. Especially since 10% of IKEA‘s sales are now made online. Web sales have shot up by 26.8% on the year.
The business has confirmed that the rise in online sales has not had an affect on the amount of customers coming into their stores. In fact 5% more visitors are going into the store as opposed to the previous year.
“Over the past year we have been focused on really understanding how our customers live at home here in the UK” said UK boss Gillian Drakeford who is pledging a £27 million investment into price cuts.” She went on further to say; “What is really encouraging is that this growth has come from our existing business, not relying on a bricks-and-mortar expansion programme. We want to simplify and improve the shopping experience and offer convenience and value for time to our customers. I recognise we have a lot of work to do here, to evolve our business to meet the expectations of all UK consumers, and over the coming year we will be making a number of updates on our way to creating a truly multichannel shopping experience at Ikea.”
IKEA opened its first UK store in Cheshire in 1987 and since then has become famous for its flat pack furniture but mostly because of its affordable home furnishing items – which the company promises to always offer their products at the best price they can.
Not many people realise that IKEA is a charity – non profit company and is the world‘s largest furniture company and has made a pledge to double turnover and market share by 2020.
