Ikea will open a site in Cherry Hill amid plans for smaller stores
The Swedish furniture manufacturer arrived in Pennsylvania 40 years ago and is still growing.
It’s been 40 years since Ikea, the Swedish-founded, Netherlands-based furniture and home goods supplier, made the Philadelphia area its base for a network of stores the size of Amazon warehouses.
Ikea has had stores in Conshohocken, next to its U.S. headquarters, and on Columbus Avenue in South Philly since 2004 — each sprawling over 300,000 square feet and employing over 200.
The company plans to mark this year’s anniversary by opening a third, smaller center on Wednesday at the Ellisburg Shopping Center on Route 70 in Cherry Hill, two years after experimenting with a pop-up kitchen-design center at the Cherry Hill Mall.
From its 800-plus-worker U.S. headquarters next to the Conshohocken store, Ikea now oversees 52 retail stores across the United States. The company is adding 11 this year, some in a new, smaller format, plus 16 “Plan and Order Points” locations, including the Cherry Hill store, where shoppers can design their own kitchens, bathrooms, and bedrooms; select and specify Ikea items; and pick up finished items later.
Ikea had a bumpy U.S. start, with inventory problems. It opened one U.S. store a year in the late 1980s, then slowed to none for much of the 1990s. Ikea store openings took off in the early 2000s, though U.S. sales were flat at $5.5 billion during 2024, a little more than 10% of its world total.
Ikea tried to manufacture furniture closer to customers but shut its only U.S. factory, blaming high costs. Now, Ikea buys some cabinets and mattresses from U.S. makers and is seeking other suppliers here. Ikea furniture is made mostly in China, Poland, Italy, Germany and Sweden. Its China imports directly to the U.S. fell to around $611 million last year from $840 million five years earlier, according to data compiled by Trademo.
Robert Olson, a Midwest native who serves as chief operating officer of Ikea’s U.S. arm, spoke with The Inquirer. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
You have stores in both South Philly and suburban Conshohocken. Do customers shop for different items?
The merchandise they buy is the same! We have the same groupings of people: young people with children, empty-nesters.
Readers complain the resale market for fine furniture is dead. Has Ikea changed the way Americans furnish our homes?
We find the customers’ fit. Most of my own furniture is Ikea. We had two boys growing up. We had storage needs, for example, to store their games. We are empty-nesters now in our home near Lansdale. We just redid our kitchen [cabinet] doors in Axstad white.
Your first U.S. store in 1985 was in the Plymouth Meeting Mall, where the Whole Foods is now. Why Pennsylvania?
We had a vision ‘to create a better life for many people.’ Americans were a huge portion of that ‘many people’ where Ikea hadn’t opened.
We looked at quite a few areas across the U.S. People in Philadelphia were extremely welcoming, starting with the officials who were in state government helping find sites.
As well as our coworkers. We look for people that are the right fit, based on culture and values, and that diversity of thought.
We have a few from that amazing team still here today from back when we opened. They tell me it was amazing to see the lines, the excitement of the customers. Our supply chain was a little shocked.
You once ran a store for Walmart, which sells everything, leaving the customer to find it. Ikea walks visitors down a carefully ordered path. Why did you change stores?
I ran a Walmart and a Sportsmart in Chicago. It was 27 years ago that Ikea came to the Midwest to Schaumberg, Ill. That’s when I joined. At first I was a business controller, then a store manager, then I came here [to headquarters in Pennsylvania].
Ikea is a concept company. The layout of the store, the way we work with inspiration and the room sets, showing [the] customer solutions to their needs, was really unique.
We spend a lot of time studying the customer at home and what solutions they need. We evaluate those needs and find solutions for them. We have what we call democratic design, five elements: form, function, quality, sustainability, and price. We always try to start with price and to solve the customer’s needs.
How do you collect information on Americans?
We come to American houses and study how you live — your opportunities and challenges. We do surveys and interviews. We connect to the consumer to understand their living situations, reflect on how we solve their needs, and then we display those solutions in the store.
And we go on the shop floor and work with the suppliers to make sure we are efficient and effective and give the right level of product.
Households have changed a lot since Ikea stores started in the 1960s. Does your research and your merchandise reflect smaller families and more diverse populations?
We have more categories now. To stay current you have to evolve, adapt, change. We try to make sure we have a fair representation of married people with children, single people, and empty-nesters.
Our vision is to make a better life for the many. For everybody? No. For the many Americans, the many Swedish people, the many German people who go to Ikea stores. For most people. To really make sure we have the right price, the right product solution.
We are coming in with some smaller-format solutions where we can really penetrate across the U.S. We are opening in Pharr, Texas, on the border with Mexico, a store with a smaller format. And in San Marcos between Austin and San Antonio. We’re starting to get into those gaps.
We are not now in Manhattan — the closest we have is Brooklyn and Elizabeth and Paramus, N.J. But we recently announced we will be getting into Fifth Avenue in a new building.
Ikea bought TaskRabbit, whose independent assemblers put together Ikea customers’ furniture. Workers have told us they make less on Ikea jobs now, with Ikea setting piece rates instead of letting them negotiate with clients.
I don’t know about the assemblers. The opportunity we saw and that TaskRabbit has realized is the mass growth they have experienced in solving the customer needs. TaskRabbit can also do yard work and painting. They are able to capture the much larger Ikea customer base. That has compounded their opportunity.
You’re owned by a foundation set up by Ikea’s founder. What does it give back in the Philadelphia area?
They work more with global areas. We can show areas [Ikea employees] have worked with here: Philabundance, school programs, shelters. We do that in all communities, especially with young children, and women.
Ikea promotes its commitment to sustainability and the “circular economy,” what does that mean?
We go after that in a strong way. We have solar panels on some of our buildings. A couple of wind farms.
Customers are able to sell back their used Ikea furniture in return for store credit with our programs such as Buy back & Resell and As-is. And we have electric vehicle chargers at almost all our U.S. locations. We’ll have a total of 500 fast public chargers and more than 300 fleet chargers in the next few years.