MICHAEL OWEN
GLOBAL furniture giant Ikea is struggling to remain viable in South Australia, just seven months after opening a $40

million superstore, according to the nation’s leading furniture industry body.
Despite having made a “significant impact” on rivals such as Le Cornu Furniture Centre at Keswick and Harvey Norman stores, the Furnishing Industry Association of Australia said it was “common knowledge Ikea is struggling here in Adelaide”.

“Ikea are struggling,” Martin Videon, state president of the Furnishing Industry Association of Australia (FIAA), told The Advertiser yesterday. “When they first opened you couldn’t move down there – it was a novelty for South Australia. Things have changed now and the novelty has worn off. The furnishing industry, like many other industries, is in deep trouble with low sales.

“Ikea are very much a victim of that trend as well.

“You can go down to Ikea at any time and have a cricket match in the aisles.”

Ikea opened to great fanfare, next to Adelaide Airport, on April 20. At the time, the company employed 380 people after receiving a staggering 19,292 applications.

Ikea Adelaide manager Edwin Van Der Graaf said the store now employed 363.

But after taking one week to respond to a series of questions from The Advertiser, Mr Van Der Graaf in an emailed statement refused to reveal if the store had met its sales targets for the first six months. He also refused to reveal the total amount of money spent by South Australians in the store and how many people had visited the store since it opened.

A spokesman said the information was “deemed commercially sensitive and these statistics cannot be released to the media”.

Mr Van Der Graaf said in the statement “traffic through the store has remained constant”.

Mr Videon accused Ikea of “dumbing down” furniture in SA and paying the price.

Le Cornu advertising manager Jerome Ryals said Ikea served a different market.

“But everyone is going through a hard time at the moment,” he said.