Ikea starts off inaugural day with a bang

Hyderabad: On the first day of its first store in Hyderabad that led to traffic chaos, Swedish furnishing major Ikea appears to have headed towards roaring success by meeting one-thirds of its sales target.

According to unverified data purporting to have been leaked by an Ikea official, the furniture major appears to have registered Rs 9.5 million (Rs 95 lakh) sales on its inaugural day, which is nearly one-thirds of its Rs 32-million (Rs 3.2 crore) a day sales target. 

Of the 19 categories that the company has divided its offerings into, mattresses appear to have topped the sales with Rs 1.5 million sales, followed by Rs 1.19 million sales in children’s category. 

Outdoor category was at the end of the list with the sales of a mere Rs 69,000. 

An email sent to the company for an official comment remained unanswered.

The Hyderabad store is the first of the 40 that Ikea intends to set up in India with the largest-ever foreign investment in single brand retail in the country. The publicity blitzing that the company launched in Hyderabad focusing on its for-all-classes nature lead to around 40,000 people thro-nging the store on its inaugural day, leading to traffic jams in its vicinity and leading to a stampede kind of situation at the store.

India’s furniture and furnishing market is largely unorganised with big players catering to high-end market.

Experts believe that it could put pressure on large furniture and furnishing sellers like Home Town, etc and eat into the unorganised market as the Swedish firm enjoys economies of scale.

Earlier, the foray of sectoral giants like French sports goods retailer Decathalon, and Germ-any-based Metro Cash and Carry have dented the sales of players from the unorganised sector.

However, Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of Third Eyesight, a consulting firm focussed on the retail and consumer products, feels that the respo-nse received cannot indicate its future performance. “The response to iconic foreign brands on the first day or first few weeks in India has typically been extraordinary.”

Without commenting on the expected response of Ikea’s rivals, Mr Dutta does not expect the Swedish furniture giant to burn cash to give discounts like some ecommerce firms have done to gain marketshare.