Ikea to Close Shanghai Neighborhood Store in Apparent Strategy Shift

Ikea will shutter its first Chinese “small store” just two years after it opened in Shanghai’s city center, sounding an apparent death knell for the Swedish discount home goods giant’s ambitious China-focused neighborhood store strategy unveiled in 2019.

The ill-fated store, which launched in Yangpu in March 2020 as the first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic began to recede in China, was the only one of its kind built as part of a planned rollout across the country that, according to company representatives at the time, would use “big data” to analyze the characteristics of surrounding communities and localize their offerings.