Construction of New Zealand’s first Swedish-born homeware store and eatery is well under way, and while there was not yet a firm date for its opening, IKEA was planning to cut the ribbon in time for the holiday season.
And it is expected to have a distinctly Kiwi flavour as well, with potentially even a garage as part of its home showroom.
Karen Pflug, chief sustainability officer for IKEA’s parent company the Ingka Group, was in Auckland this week to check how the construction of the store was going.
“I’m definitely not a construction expert, but I was extremely impressed with it and the amount of work,” she told RNZ.
“New Zealand [has] a lot of safety measures and really high quality specs because we’re in a seismic area of course, and then our construction experts were telling us all about the basalt rock slabs as well that we’ve had to build the foundations into.
“So it’s been state-of-the-art and a real world-class store that we’re building. And then important for me too with my sustainability role, is that it’s also going to be world-class from a sustainability point of view and having a five-star rating there with sustainability criteria, so that really excites me.”
Pflug allayed fears small, far-flung New Zealand would get a scaled-back IKEA experience, sans meatballs.
“We’re bringing the full experience. It’s a full large-size store, and so with that comes a restaurant. And of course many people know IKEA as a home furnishing retailer, and that’s what we’re most famous for. But around the world last year we served over 600 million meals, so we are one of the largest restaurants in the world as well.
“So yes, customers in Auckland will be able to come in and taste the wonderful variety of foods that we offer. It will include the meatballs, but it will also have plant-based alternatives as well, which will actually serve at a lower price than the meat-based options. And of course, there will be things baked in the ovens as well, like the famous Swedish cinnamon scrolls and so on too.”
The store will have a local flavour too, Pflug said, in the home furnishings it offers.
“We’ve done over 500 visits to homes, and it’s been fantastic because we’re coming in, of course with our home furnishing expertise, our life at home knowledge, and also our desire to make sure that sustainable living is truly affordable for the many people – because we don’t think it should be a luxury for just the chosen few, but we’re here to listen and learn from New Zealanders as well.
“And what we’ve noticed here, there are some similarities – the desire to declutter and to organise your life, so storage across the home is super important, but also the multifunctional nature of homes here is probably more than we see in other countries.
“And a quirk that we’ve seen here too is the use of the garage as an extra home – whether that’s the home office, gym, sort of den for the kids or whatever. So we’re also wanting to showcase that we understand New Zealand life at home when we have our showroom set up to really show that we’ve been listening and learning to what people want here.”
Asked how IKEA kept its quality up and prices down, Pflug said it was part of the chain’s “democratic design, which is what we call form function, low price, quality, and sustainability”.
“Everything’s designed in IKEA Sweden, and there we start with the raw material choices, we make sure we’re designing to a price point, and we want the best possible quality, so that the products last a long time. And then our size and scale and our relationship with our suppliers enables us to get great price points as well.”
As for when it will open, she said the hope was it would be ready by Christmas.
