Ikea China rolls out online shopping service in Shanghai

Swedish home furnishings retailer Ikea will launch its e-commerce business in Shanghai and start to sell its products online by the end of August.As a pilot program, the delivery services will be limited to Shanghai for the moment. All of its ready-to-assemble furniture, appliances and home accessories, except for food and green plants, will be sold online. The company plans to expand its e-commerce services across the country if the trial run is successful.With the new e-commerce service, consumers can login to Ikea's official website and purchase products via the shopping cart portal. Ikea's online and offline products will maintain the same categories and same prices.As Ikea's entry point in China, Shanghai has three Ikea stores and relatively mature warehousing and logistics system.In May, the furniture retailer established a pickup and order point in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province. The stores in Ningbo, a nearby city, will provide goods for that service."This business model, with small investments, is suitable for smaller cities, where they don't have physical stores. Ikea will launch more such pickup and order points in China," the company said.Ikea China also boasted outstanding performance in 2016 financial year. By August 10, 2016, Ikea stores received 83.46 million visitors, marking a growth of 20% compared with the previous financial year; and its sales reached CNY11.7 billion, an increase of 19.4% compared with the previous financial year.