宜家又再一次回到哈法。曾在1978年开过，但在1990年关闭。
Ginormous retailer IKEA Canada’s opening at Dartmouth Crossing next month is causing ripples of excitement — and more than a little consternation — among local furniture sellers.
“I don’t know if I can compete with them,” said Qing Chan, owner of Hometown Furniture & Mattress, in an interview Wednesday.
“They’re one of the biggest retailers in the world. I’m just trying to not be completely beaten by them.”
When IKEA opens doors to its long-awaited, 330,000-square-foot store at 9 a.m. on Sept. 27, the consumer love-in with the internationally-recognized retailer will likely be palpable.
By that time, opening ceremonies will have been underway for 40 minutes. IKEA Halifax store manager Sue Coulet is promising fun family entertainment and great giveaways.
The giant, environmentally-friendly store is going to have a showroom, a market hall, a full restaurant and IKEA’s signature ‘Smaland’ children’s play area.
On social media, there’s already a buzz being stirred up by shoppers vowing to be there soon after the store opens.
“You’ll have to plan a trip to (Halifax) sometime after IKEA opens!!!” Amanda Colins told a friend on Facebook Wednesday afternoon. “It says they'll have a children's play place?! Awesome!!”
IKEA is expected to attract an entirely new group of shoppers to the Halifax area from around the region — a good thing not only for IKEA but also other retailers, said Jim Cormier, the Atlantic Canada director of the Retail Council of Canada.
“There are people who may not have been driving to Halifax to shop but who now might, even if it’s only a couple of times a year, and it will end up helping a lot of retailers in the area,” said Cormier in an interview.
“You might end up staying in a hotel, going to a restaurant and maybe catching a Halifax Mooseheads game,” he said.
James Ramia, manager of the Gallery 1 Furniture Centre in the Ramia family-owned Atrium Home Furnishing Centre, is counting on that traffic.
That five-year-old shopping mall is home to six furniture and home furnishings-related businesses, including Ashley HomeStore, Wacky’s Flooring, WorldWide Furniture, Sleep Country, Jade Stone and Gallery 1.
That’s roughly 120,000 square feet of home furnishings retail in one location, and Ramia is confident the arrival of IKEA will only bring more people in to comparison shop and boost his store’s sales.
The Atrium boasts a total of 200,000 square feet of retail space.
“They’re certainly a competitor to us,” said Ramia in an interview Wednesday. “But we’re very interested that they’re on this side of the bridge and we hope that will draw people to the area.”
When, or if, shoppers drawn to the region by IKEA do check out other furniture stores, Ramia is confident Gallery 1’s product line and service will stack up nicely.
“(IKEA is) focused mainly on contemporary design,” he said. “At the Atrium, we have traditional furniture and contemporary, and we have custom furniture designed exactly the way you want it. We have designers here at work.”
With its warehouse in the Burnside Industrial Park, Ramia said Gallery 1 is able to deliver products quickly. That includes providing fully-assembled pieces of furniture and removing and recycling any packaging material from the customer’s home.
The longest-operating furniture store in the Atrium is WorldWide Furniture. It’s been in business for about 40 years and had already built up a customer base before moving into the Atrium in 2012. It relocated there because the Ramia family wanted to build a critical mass of furniture and furnishings stores, to attract customers to the area.
In the days leading up to the IKEA store’s opening, Ramia wants to create a buzz around the Artium to ensure its stores are not forgotten during the IKEA opening ceremonies.
“We’re co-ordinating and gearing up,” he said, declining to divulge promotional event details. “There will be sales in the store … We will be ramping up as we get closer to the holidays.”
RELATED: Dartmouth Crossing IKEA to open in late September
At Hometown Furniture & Mattress, Chan was less optimistic Wednesday.
He said the opening of the IKEA store is likely to hurt his business, which includes three stores — one on Almon Street in the North End, another on Akerley Boulevard in Dartmouth and yet another on Prince Edward Island.
“A lot of my customers are the younger generation, 30 years old and below, and they generally really like IKEA furniture,” he said. “I guess I will have to change my product line … to perhaps something more transitional.”
Transitional furniture style is a mix of contemporary and traditional.
A study conducted by researchers in Sweden in 2013, suggests that IKEA’s arrival in communities is good for smaller retailers like Hometown Furniture & Mattress. The study — “What happens when IKEA comes to town?” — found that the arrival of the big-box retailer boosts overall spending on furniture and generally helps other furniture stores.
“Our results showed that a new IKEA store has a large positive impact on revenues in the durable goods trade in the entry municipality,” said the study’s authors.
“In our main empirical specifications, revenues in durable goods trade increased ... around 20 per cent following the entry of IKEA. Most of this increase seems to be attributed to an inflow in purchasing power from surrounding municipalities. The effect on revenues in durable goods trade in neighboring municipalities was small, and in most cases not significantly different from zero.”
The researchers found that new IKEA stores act like a magnet, drawing in new shoppers from outlying areas and growing the sales pie for all retailers in communities where big-box stores are placed.
Dr. Ramesh Venkat, an associate professor of marketing at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University, is loathe to lend too much weight to that one study. But he said in an interview Wednesday that the study suggests local retailers will benefit from an IKEA boost.
Dan Shaw, director of the masters of business administration program at the Rowe School of Business at Dalhousie University, agrees.
“Furniture sales will go up in the Halifax area over the next few years and it won’t just be because IKEA has come to town,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “Other furniture stores will also benefit from the traffic.”
Venkat and Shaw agree, however, that other furniture retailers will have to up their game.
“It depends on your competitive position,” said Shaw. “Canadian retailing is the second most competitive retail situation in the world … and you’re bringing in a retailer that is totally committed to reducing costs and passing those savings onto customers.
“They’ve had seven consecutive years of cutting costs by two per cent per year,” he said. “It’s going to make a competitive landscape all that much more competitive.”
Shaw said the new IKEA could pull in shoppers from as far away as Moncton and Cape Breton, and maybe even Newfoundland.
Small retailers will have to ensure their product lines, customer service and knowledge of their customers’ needs are top notch to survive IKEA, said Shaw.
“You’ve got to have a more intimate knowledge of the people and trends in Halifax … instead of just being some person somewhere,” he said. “It has to be someone you can build a relationship with.”
At Hometown Furniture & Mattress, Chan has been doing that since he started his business seven years ago. A former international student turned entrepreneur, he has taken care to employ salespeople who speak a multitude of languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Arabic and various Indian languages, and has built up a loyal customer base among new Canadians in Halifax.
“We have a large selection of international clients,” he said.
That’s the kind of personalized service IKEA is unlikely to be able to match, said Shaw.
“IKEA is not agile enough to basically have a strategy for every one of those retailers,” he said. “They will just have an overall strategy for Atlantic Canada.”
Although the previous IKEA store in the Halifax area, set up in 1978, closed about a dozen years later, Shaw figures this new mega-store will have more lasting power. Price-conscious Haligonians are likely to appreciate IKEA’s low prices, and the growth of the region over the past few decades has created a larger customer base for IKEA, he said.
“In 1978, they were too early into this market,” said Shaw. “Now, it’s big enough. They’re usually looking for half a million of population, and we have that within a half-hour drive.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1495179-local-furniture-stores-facing-the-ikea-factor
Ginormous retailer IKEA Canada’s opening at Dartmouth Crossing next month is causing ripples of excitement — and more than a little consternation — among local furniture sellers.
“I don’t know if I can compete with them,” said Qing Chan, owner of Hometown Furniture & Mattress, in an interview Wednesday.
“They’re one of the biggest retailers in the world. I’m just trying to not be completely beaten by them.”
When IKEA opens doors to its long-awaited, 330,000-square-foot store at 9 a.m. on Sept. 27, the consumer love-in with the internationally-recognized retailer will likely be palpable.
By that time, opening ceremonies will have been underway for 40 minutes. IKEA Halifax store manager Sue Coulet is promising fun family entertainment and great giveaways.
The giant, environmentally-friendly store is going to have a showroom, a market hall, a full restaurant and IKEA’s signature ‘Smaland’ children’s play area.
On social media, there’s already a buzz being stirred up by shoppers vowing to be there soon after the store opens.
“You’ll have to plan a trip to (Halifax) sometime after IKEA opens!!!” Amanda Colins told a friend on Facebook Wednesday afternoon. “It says they'll have a children's play place?! Awesome!!”
IKEA is expected to attract an entirely new group of shoppers to the Halifax area from around the region — a good thing not only for IKEA but also other retailers, said Jim Cormier, the Atlantic Canada director of the Retail Council of Canada.
“There are people who may not have been driving to Halifax to shop but who now might, even if it’s only a couple of times a year, and it will end up helping a lot of retailers in the area,” said Cormier in an interview.
“You might end up staying in a hotel, going to a restaurant and maybe catching a Halifax Mooseheads game,” he said.
James Ramia, manager of the Gallery 1 Furniture Centre in the Ramia family-owned Atrium Home Furnishing Centre, is counting on that traffic.
That five-year-old shopping mall is home to six furniture and home furnishings-related businesses, including Ashley HomeStore, Wacky’s Flooring, WorldWide Furniture, Sleep Country, Jade Stone and Gallery 1.
That’s roughly 120,000 square feet of home furnishings retail in one location, and Ramia is confident the arrival of IKEA will only bring more people in to comparison shop and boost his store’s sales.
The Atrium boasts a total of 200,000 square feet of retail space.
“They’re certainly a competitor to us,” said Ramia in an interview Wednesday. “But we’re very interested that they’re on this side of the bridge and we hope that will draw people to the area.”
When, or if, shoppers drawn to the region by IKEA do check out other furniture stores, Ramia is confident Gallery 1’s product line and service will stack up nicely.
“(IKEA is) focused mainly on contemporary design,” he said. “At the Atrium, we have traditional furniture and contemporary, and we have custom furniture designed exactly the way you want it. We have designers here at work.”
With its warehouse in the Burnside Industrial Park, Ramia said Gallery 1 is able to deliver products quickly. That includes providing fully-assembled pieces of furniture and removing and recycling any packaging material from the customer’s home.
The longest-operating furniture store in the Atrium is WorldWide Furniture. It’s been in business for about 40 years and had already built up a customer base before moving into the Atrium in 2012. It relocated there because the Ramia family wanted to build a critical mass of furniture and furnishings stores, to attract customers to the area.
In the days leading up to the IKEA store’s opening, Ramia wants to create a buzz around the Artium to ensure its stores are not forgotten during the IKEA opening ceremonies.
“We’re co-ordinating and gearing up,” he said, declining to divulge promotional event details. “There will be sales in the store … We will be ramping up as we get closer to the holidays.”
RELATED: Dartmouth Crossing IKEA to open in late September
At Hometown Furniture & Mattress, Chan was less optimistic Wednesday.
He said the opening of the IKEA store is likely to hurt his business, which includes three stores — one on Almon Street in the North End, another on Akerley Boulevard in Dartmouth and yet another on Prince Edward Island.
“A lot of my customers are the younger generation, 30 years old and below, and they generally really like IKEA furniture,” he said. “I guess I will have to change my product line … to perhaps something more transitional.”
Transitional furniture style is a mix of contemporary and traditional.
A study conducted by researchers in Sweden in 2013, suggests that IKEA’s arrival in communities is good for smaller retailers like Hometown Furniture & Mattress. The study — “What happens when IKEA comes to town?” — found that the arrival of the big-box retailer boosts overall spending on furniture and generally helps other furniture stores.
“Our results showed that a new IKEA store has a large positive impact on revenues in the durable goods trade in the entry municipality,” said the study’s authors.
“In our main empirical specifications, revenues in durable goods trade increased ... around 20 per cent following the entry of IKEA. Most of this increase seems to be attributed to an inflow in purchasing power from surrounding municipalities. The effect on revenues in durable goods trade in neighboring municipalities was small, and in most cases not significantly different from zero.”
The researchers found that new IKEA stores act like a magnet, drawing in new shoppers from outlying areas and growing the sales pie for all retailers in communities where big-box stores are placed.
Dr. Ramesh Venkat, an associate professor of marketing at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University, is loathe to lend too much weight to that one study. But he said in an interview Wednesday that the study suggests local retailers will benefit from an IKEA boost.
Dan Shaw, director of the masters of business administration program at the Rowe School of Business at Dalhousie University, agrees.
“Furniture sales will go up in the Halifax area over the next few years and it won’t just be because IKEA has come to town,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “Other furniture stores will also benefit from the traffic.”
Venkat and Shaw agree, however, that other furniture retailers will have to up their game.
“It depends on your competitive position,” said Shaw. “Canadian retailing is the second most competitive retail situation in the world … and you’re bringing in a retailer that is totally committed to reducing costs and passing those savings onto customers.
“They’ve had seven consecutive years of cutting costs by two per cent per year,” he said. “It’s going to make a competitive landscape all that much more competitive.”
Shaw said the new IKEA could pull in shoppers from as far away as Moncton and Cape Breton, and maybe even Newfoundland.
Small retailers will have to ensure their product lines, customer service and knowledge of their customers’ needs are top notch to survive IKEA, said Shaw.
“You’ve got to have a more intimate knowledge of the people and trends in Halifax … instead of just being some person somewhere,” he said. “It has to be someone you can build a relationship with.”
At Hometown Furniture & Mattress, Chan has been doing that since he started his business seven years ago. A former international student turned entrepreneur, he has taken care to employ salespeople who speak a multitude of languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Arabic and various Indian languages, and has built up a loyal customer base among new Canadians in Halifax.
“We have a large selection of international clients,” he said.
That’s the kind of personalized service IKEA is unlikely to be able to match, said Shaw.
“IKEA is not agile enough to basically have a strategy for every one of those retailers,” he said. “They will just have an overall strategy for Atlantic Canada.”
Although the previous IKEA store in the Halifax area, set up in 1978, closed about a dozen years later, Shaw figures this new mega-store will have more lasting power. Price-conscious Haligonians are likely to appreciate IKEA’s low prices, and the growth of the region over the past few decades has created a larger customer base for IKEA, he said.
“In 1978, they were too early into this market,” said Shaw. “Now, it’s big enough. They’re usually looking for half a million of population, and we have that within a half-hour drive.”
http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/1495179-local-furniture-stores-facing-the-ikea-factor
