If you live in Dubai, you have at least one item from Ikea in your household (or you have tried a bite of the famous AED5 hotdog bun). You’re not a true blue UAE expat if you haven’t been to the blue box at all, or graced the cover of their annual catalog.
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| Nixon and Jenny Borbe and kids, residents of Sharjah, happily posing for Ikea souvenir catalog |
And you might never ever have to put another Ikea product in your balikbayan box again because their biggest store is opening in our homeland.
Here are some facts about this groundbreaking milestone:
Biggest in the world
Covering a total land area of 65,000 square meters, the 2-level complex will be equivalent to 150 full basketball courts. It will be located at SM Mall of Asia grounds. This size also covers the store’s warehouse, e-commerce facility, and integrated call center.
The store will be linked to the mall through direct walkways, making it super accessible to mall-goers.
Among its 422 stores across the world, Manila’s will be the biggest.
“We will open an Ikea store to give millions of Filipinos easy access to a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low almost everyone will be able to afford them”
Opening by end of 2020
Although there’s no date yet of its groundbreaking, it is targeted to finish construction by end of 2020. So by that time, many Filipinos will have their old furniture broken.
9000 products
There will be around 9,000 well-designed, functional home furnishing products that can help Filipinos make everyday life at home a little better. All at an affordable price.
There are more than 50 room settings where you can touch and test the furniture.
500+ new job opportunities
More jobs for everyone. On top of spin-off jobs, the company is set to hire at least 500 personnel within the Philippines. Check this careers page or follow them in LinkedIn to get updated.
So you better start practicing your assembly and disassembly skills okay.
Business partnership
Ikea is also looking for local suppliers for food (Hotdogs, ehem!), security, housekeeping, printing, and other services.
Ikea Playroom
While you’re busy shopping, you can leave the kids to a supervised soft play area.
Online store
If you are overwhelmed by its gigantic size, don’t worry as they will also launch an online store, ikea.ph. And will deliver across the Greater Manila Area.
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| A jeepney delivery? Lol, why not 🙂 |
You know what I’m sure of? People battling out the right pronunciation of Ikea. So, for the record, ist is, “ee-kay-uh.”