If you want to visit the new Ikea “Hus” in downtown Vienna, you have to book a time slot beforehand, as in the Louvre in Paris or the Vatican Museums in Rome.
For the opening day on Thursday, all slots had been booked out for days.
Anyone who tried it anyway got the answer: "The registration for this event has already expired."
Andreas Mihm
Business correspondent for Austria, East-Central and Southeastern Europe and Turkey based in Vienna.
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Ikea would not have become Sweden's best-known brand and the world's largest furniture store if the operators had no sense of the zeitgeist. So the new Ikea department store not only includes household items, furniture and a Swedish restaurant, but also a 2600 square meter roof terrace that is accessible until midnight, with a snack bar, greenery and a fantastic view over the city. Underneath is a hotel floor leased to Accor hotel brand JO & JOE. What is missing is the ball pit at the entrance - and car parking spaces. That was the condition of the city when the Swedes came up with the idea ten years ago to open an inner-city shop here, at the location of the old railway headquarters. Ikea built the first department store without parking spaces.
The supposed shortcoming is now concept.
The group also linguistically follows “the expectations of urban customers for mobility without a car.
The new IKEA store is completely car-free - the concept is entirely geared towards pedestrians, public transport users and cyclists. ”Anyone who wants to shop here comes on foot, by bike, or by subway or tram.
The Vienna Westbahnhof is right outside the door.
Small items such as three plastic cans of “Pruta” for 1 euro or six plates of “Kallas” for 2 euros still fit in the shopping bag, the 3-seater sofa “Färlov” can be picked up on the outskirts or delivered by cargo bike or electric car.
"Sufficient space for bird nests and beehives"
The “environmentally friendly showpiece” (self-promotion by IKEA) on an area of almost 22,000 square meters is intended to help the climate as well as sales. Ikea manager Maimuna Mosser calculates that this would save 350,000 car journeys per year and thus 1000 tons of CO2 compared to a conventional furniture store. 160 trees and bushes adorn the cube-shaped building, allegedly they lower the temperature in Vienna, which is plagued by the heat of summer. There is a photovoltaic system and “enough space for bird nests and beehives”. A concept with which, as the left-wing alternative Wiener Wochenblatt Falter nicely sums it up, "the Greta generation is to be brought into the lap of the IKEA family."
The group has invested 140 million euros in the light ambience with the charm of a walk-in high-bay warehouse. It is no longer an Ikea labyrinth in which the customer is led from the kitchen to the bedroom to the bathroom before he ends up standing in front of the stand with the hundreds of packs of tea lights. The new store should be a meeting point that invites you to linger, search and buy, preferably via mobile app, but no longer than 90 minutes, please - out of consideration for other interested parties, as the website warns. Ikea is currently testing a similar “future store format” in a newly renovated branch in Shanghai. Above all, there is the question of how face-to-face business and online shopping can grow together.
In any case, the Viennese department store manager Johanna Cederlöf presents her shop as part of the city society, wants to make the business “the second living room of the Viennese” - so that sales in Austria, which increased by 5.5 percent to 847 million euros in the previous year despite Corona, continue to grow . Not everyone thinks that is good. Outside, a few steadfast demonstrators against exploitation through harmful supply chains, others accuse the furniture company of having cleared ancient forests in Romania.
Vienna's mayor Michael Ludwig is not a problem. He is happy about 370 new jobs and the "signal that we are tearing up the asphalt in a city like Vienna". The promised traffic calming in the district will also be managed. It will then open 10 minutes before the time. Flag-waving employees greeted the first customers. It's a diverse mix that the marketing department couldn't have ordered more beautifully. Old and young, women and men with Caucasian and Asian facial features, light and dark skinned people, baseball caps and those with headscarves populated the five floors in no time. Only the big bike stand outside the door remains empty for the time being.