IKEA will invest 100 million dollars for its new flagship store in Guadalajara

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Among the upcoming plans of the Swedish furniture company, the opening of a store in Puebla that will only serve e-commerce stands out, as well as hiring more local suppliers.

We do not come to Mexico to stay a couple of years, we think in the long term”.

Ricardo Pinheiro, commercial director of IKEA Mexico.

Mexico is not a short-term business for IKEA, a ready-to-assemble furniture company, because after a year in our country, the Swedish company has already announced its expansion plans for online and physical sales and that it will source from local suppliers in response to global logistics supply issues. This would allow in the medium term to serve South American nations.

This was stated by Ricardo Pinheiro, commercial director of IKEA Mexico, who announced that they will soon invest 100 million dollars for their new store, now in Guadalajara, after having injected a similar figure a year ago at its headquarters in Mexico City.

Puebla is a small store, but it serves the virtual service. However, “we see very strong investment in the factory in Saltillo, Coahuila, (where IKEA manufactures mattresses, sofas, and pillows) of more than 1 million square meters of land, with the construction that is already finished, with production for South America North. We have 500 collaborators, but soon there will be 1,000 people in the team”, he specified in an interview with El Economista.

For IKEA, “Mexico is one of the most important markets for expansion and is among the 10 countries in furniture for home decoration and from there, the country takes a strategic position in the investment plan and it is the first time that we expanded in Latin America with the entry into Mexico because the potential is enormous and it is a strong economy”, he assured.

He stressed that the opening of the virtual store in Puebla is at the door, since after the Covid-19 pandemic, “we realized the importance of the online store, which has been accelerated and covers the metropolitan area (Mexico City, State of Mexico, Hidalgo, others)”.

The commercial director of IKEA Mexico mentioned that the Scandinavian company has a plan to expand the digital store in Monterrey, to cover the triangle from the Mexican capital to Guadalajara and Nuevo León, and open digital stores in the main surrounding cities.

“We do not come to Mexico to stay a couple of years, we think in the long term”, so much so that it already defines strategies for the Mexican factory to be able to supply the South American continent. IKEA has announced that it is going to expand in other Latin American countries such as Colombia and Peru, through another franchise”, Pinheiro said.

Meanwhile, he added, the conflict in Ukraine affects the issue of wood and raw materials, so during the recent visit of the directors to the IKEA plant in Saltillo, support with more local supplies was requested.

“We have a project to start opening more Mexican suppliers. We already do it with suppliers of lighting (lamps) and chairs, furniture, and dining rooms. We are very open so that in the next 12 months we have more suppliers”, confided Ricardo Pinheiro.

Ricardo Pinheiro recognized that the company has good acceptance among Mexicans, and the products that are sold the most are: beds, mattresses, dressers, as well as cutlery items, pots and pans, and bedroom textiles (bedspreads, blankets, sheets). As well as decorative items such as frames, mirrors, candles, pots, etc.

The Guadalajara Post