Hyderabad IKEA opening, huge crowds drawn

Neither crawling traffic nor pouring rain could keep thousands of curious Hyderabadi shoppers from pouring into the city’s new IKEA on its opening day.

At the end of the day, about 40,000 customers had come through the store in all.

In the beginning of the day, people were simply trickling into the store. However, as the day went on, more and more people flooded into the new IKEA.

This trend also continued onto the store’s second day. Everyone wanted to finally get a taste of the famed Swedish retail giant and see IKEA’s products for themselves.

The store’s opening in Hyderabad has been a massive success, and it seems that the customers will keep on coming for quite some time.

IKEA refused to divulge the store’s total sales on its first day. However, sources said that the store rang up about ₹1 crore.

Patrik Antoni, the deputy country manager of IKEA India, has noted that Indian customers seemed more curious and interested in IKEA’s products than the Russian and Portuguese customers in IKEA’s store openings there.

Antoni says that IKEA does exactly what it aims to do: attracting all kinds of people to the store. All of IKEA’s customers have the common interest in making a home.

In Hyderabad’s IKEA, mattresses were the most popular product type.

Children’s items were the second-most popular, and living room seating was the third-most popular.

IKEA has already signed up almost 1.7 lakh Indian members. Out of these 1.7 lakh members, about 1.5 lakh of them are from Hyderabad.

In fact, the Hyderabad IKEA store has become so popular so quickly that the store had to take special measures to inform the customers of the available parking spaces outside, due to congested traffic.

There are also arrangements for more parking spaces to be added.

There are 1,200 parking spots for private cars and 700 parking spots for private two-wheelers in IKEA’s premises.

Overall, it can be undoubtedly said that IKEA’s debut in Hyderabad has been a complete success.

Image Reference: TheNewsMinute, IndiaToday