buckguy wrote: ↑February 28th, 2024, 8:56 am
The point of the store is to serve people who aren't going to the suburban locations. It's not meant to serve carbound suburbanites and it makes no sense to approach it that way. It's basically an IKEA version of a retail model that's been a round for a long time. Lot's of furniture stores have had urban locations w/o parking. Before changes in the mattress business put futons out of business, there were a lot of these places which also sold assemble it yourself book cases, desks, beds, etc. with futons as a big traffic driver. The conventional Aarhaus furniture chain started out like this. Door Store, Z, and other chains prospered often for decades selling in urban locations for first apartments and the like. Most of what people bought at these stores would be delivered. IKEA has had stores like this in foreign countries for decades, so it's not new to them, either.
SF has hundreds of thousands of people and many don't have cars or cars that are practical for hauling stuff. The alternative is to rent a vehicle for a day and go to a suburban location, which will cost far more than a downtown parking garage.
Once you get past the comments about the parking, people who've actually been to store have liked it.
I think the difference is that Ikea has set an expectation for what their store is, and these little showrooms they're opening aren't it. Kinda the same problem as the tiny drugstore size Target stores that have the same sign, you walk in and immediately discover it isn't what you thought it was. Although there are many reviews from customers who liked the store I would ask how many of them actually bought furniture...
Ikea operated for decades in the US without these showrooms, by putting big stores in suburban areas outside of major cities. They made a lot of money this way. They have been trying these smaller format showrooms for a while, sometimes even in big box centers (Long Beach, CA for example in a former Aaron Brothers picture framing store). Cars or no cars hasn't really been a factor as much as just trying to fill gaps between their big stores. This SF location is the largest "small" store they've opened in the US and certainly the highest profile.
I think there is a branding issue with all of these small Ikea stores... Maybe they need to call them something like "Ikea Design Center" or something else to indicate it is not going to be the standard Ikea experience. I believe they do actually have a different name, but the sign only says Ikea so it still will bring in people and set them up for disappointment. This particular store is larger than the other mini buildings and looks full size on the outside so it is even more misleading than others where it's obvious the size of the building couldn't possibly contain the endless choices of a standard Ikea.
Ikea has also been able to do smaller stores with off-site pickup (San Diego is a example). The store is still a good size and has the full showroom but they have a separate facility a short distance away that select oversized items are picked up from. They give you a map and send you there. I am pretty sure everything the SD store keeps at the off-site doesn't fit in a regular car either, and they use it as a delivery warehouse. They could have done this for SF as well, find an area closeby where they could get a warehouse for storing couches, beds, whatever.
As far as the car vs no car goes, the average Ikea purchase doesn't fit in a car. You see a lot of rented moving trucks or cargo vans. I did buy a Ikea couch a couple of years ago and had to go rent a cargo van, it was relatively cheap and I made great use of it for one day by planning other purchases of large bulky items. But I'm in the land of cars and have the same situation as these folks from SF without a car, still needed to rent a different vehicle or pay for delivery. Since I needed to haul other large items I elected to rent a van. One thing I can say is that Ikea may be charging too much for parking (I agree that they should validate with an acceptable minimum purchase to prevent their lot from being used all day by other office workers in the area who might just get a hot dog and save a bundle on parking). But then they are not offering $19 flat rate delivery elsewhere either... It was going to be about $100 due to the distance between the store and my house for the couch delivery.
