By Ian McConnell
Home furnishings retailer IKEA UK has revealed sales dipped more than 10 per cent in its last financial year amid the closure of stores in line with coronavirus-related restrictions, although it achieved a 31% surge in online sales.
Sales fell to £1.9bn in the year to August 31, from £2.12 billion in the prior 12 months.
Online sales now account for more than one-quarter of IKEA UK's total sales.
The company said: “With stores closed for up to three months of the financial year, IKEA UK saw a decline in sales of 10.2% on the previous year, but in a year when life at home became more important than ever, online sales surged 31% compared to the previous year and now represents 27% of its total sales in the UK (compared to 19% in the previous year).”
Peter Jelkeby, country retail manager at IKEA UK and Ireland said: “2020 was the year that changed everything – from the way we live our daily lives, to the way we do business. Overall, I am proud of our performance and the way in which we’ve continued to develop and adapt our business, to better meet our customers’ needs.
“In a year when life at home was never more important, we accelerated our transformation plans by fast-tracking the rollout of Click and Collect across all stores and introducing ‘Click and Deliver’ to DPD drop-off points. Changes made over the past year will be vital for securing the future success of our business, as we continue our ambition to create a better everyday life for the many people and build back better by becoming truly people and planet positive.”
READ MORE: Ian McConnell on Brexit: Keir Starmer U-turn dismal as Tories unable to run menodge
He added: “Throughout the pandemic, it was vitally important for us to take care of our co-workers and communities at a time when it was needed most. The health and wellbeing of our co-workers and ensuring they felt supported, both emotionally and financially, remains our highest priority. Through our emergency community support approach, we unleashed a huge breadth of kind acts and care into local communities - made possible by the passion and commitment of our co-workers.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here