After much anticipation, Swedish home furnishing retailer IKEA will open its first store in Guadalajara, Jalisco, on Nov. 14. The store will be Mexico’s fourth location and the largest in the country.
“We have very high expectations for the first month,” Cédric Gulbierz, director of IKEA Guadalajara, told newspaper El Economista. “We hope to receive 60,000 visitors in the opening month because there are many people from Guadalajara who are waiting for us.”
The store, located in the adjacent municipality of Zapopan, spans 37,000 square meters, exceeding the area of IKEA stores in Mexico City and Puebla.
“We are offering a different range of products from what our competitors have, with design, with prices and also with an offer that is not in the market today,” Gulbierz said.
With an investment of 3 billion pesos (US $147 million), IKEA Guadalajara features a self-service area of 10,000 square meters and 730 seats in the dining area. It will also employ over 400 people, creating 310 direct and 100 indirect jobs, according to Gulbierz.
Gulbierz said the decision to open a store in Jalisco is partly driven by the state’s demographics. The average age of residents is 28, and the population is growing at an annual rate of 1.6%.
This growth, he said, is expected to continue until 2050.
“It is no coincidence that this Swedish company, a world leader in home furnishings, has chosen to invest in our land for its development,” Governor of Jalisco Enrique Alfaro said in a post on X accompanied by images of him touring the store.
Alfaro said IKEA’s decision to open in Guadalajara is the result of his government’s strategy to create an environment of certainty for private investment. Just last month, Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn decided to invest millions in Jalisco in a facility to assemble “superchips” for Nvidia.
Guadalajara accounted for the highest amount of sales growth in IKEA’s online sales platform in Mexico – which this year became available in all of Mexico’s 32 states. IKEA Mexico expects the new store will draw 12% of its customers from cities outside the Guadalajara’s metro area.
Head of IKEA Retail Mexico Jaap Doornobs said that the Guadalajara store – featuring some 8,400 products – will improve the customer experience because it will have enough stock for customers to take home their selected furniture the same day.
Of all the products sold in the brand’s Mexican stores, 11% are manufactured in Mexico, Doornobs said. The company is seeking to collaborate with more local furniture manufacturers to up that percentage.
With reports from El Economista
