Last month, we shared the news that IKEA was testing some less-mega store formats in Canada, starting with one in the college city of London, Ontario that’s 20,000 feet: maybe the size of a large H&M instead of the size of a small town. The chain announced this week that they’ll be testing the format in the UK, too.

What we didn’t know is that the company tried this new format before the Canada announcement: there are small-format stores already running in Finland, Norway, and Spain. Mini-IKEAs have all of the important elements: the cafeteria, housewares, the cafeteria, a few full kitchen and bedroom setups, the cafeteria, and a pickup center for items that you’ve ordered online or from the store. Also, they have a cafeteria.

The model is called “click and collect,” a term that we already hate, but not as much as we hate the term “bricks and clicks” used to refer to omnichannel (unified in-store and online) retail here in the US, so it could always be worse.

The first store will open in the city of Norwich. In Europe, the idea behind this format is to expand into areas that are more than a two-hour drive or so from existing stores.

kea: Homeware giant unveil plans to scrap trademark maze-style shop layout for new stores [Daily Record]
Ikea to trial small-format store in Britain [The Guardian]

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