IKEA Opens Urban London Mall, With San Francisco And Toronto Next

It’s IKEA, Jim. But not as we know it.

Forget the huge, rambling stores with their unending, inescapable walkways from bathrooms thru bedrooms and heady mix of meatballs and marketplaces, concluding with soaring shelves of flat-packed furniture.

Because this morning Swedish furniture and homewares retail giant IKEA opened its urban vision in an unloved shopping mall in a busy corner of West London. The Livat concept – meaning a ‘lively gathering’ in Swedish – made its European debut in Hammersmith and is soon to be followed by downtown outlets in San Francisco, Ca. and Toronto, Canada.

In unveiling its new concept, IKEA has revealed its view of the future of not just stores but also of malls. And that, it seems, is full of community, meeting spaces, products for rent, pop-ups, food, recycling and an auto-free environment.

So, let’s start with the basics. Firstly, check you have everything you need to read this article and be assured that the following information is suitable to be assembled by one person without the need for power tools (though you can rent them).

Hammersmith is the first European location to carry the Livat brand and has been developed by Ingka Centres, the real estate arm of Ingka Group (which includes IKEA Retail and Ingka Investments).

Its launch comes two years after Ingka Centres confirmed a $230 million investment to acquire and redevelop the existing Kings Mall, which had a quarter of its space vacant, and it has brought it up to date with a contemporary, Scandinavian-inspired design and an atrium that provides a space for visitors to hang out. 

IKEA Livat Hammersmith

The mall is anchored by a new IKEA store, joined by some traditional tenants including Lidl, Sainsbury’s, H&M and Primark. But there are lots of new things too, including pop-up platform Sook – which has two, soon to be three, locations in the West End – food outlets (including a yet-to-revealed new food concept) and an interactive ‘Library of Things’ opening later in April. This community-powered enterprise will let visitors rent useful household items. 

IKEA Hammersmith is a quarter the size of a traditional store, with 1,800 products available to take away and 4,000 on display. The full range remains available for delivery, alongside in-store planning.  

It has been designed around the needs of those shopping in city-centers: it will be IKEA’s first cashless store in the U.K., feature only self-serve checkouts and has three entrances and exits, with a new Swedish Deli positioned at the store edge and open one hour earlier than the store itself.

Ingka Centres’ managing director, Cindy Andersen, was in London for the launch on route to San Francisco to check on her next project, and she told me: “Our urban meeting places have been designed to reflect modern inner-city lifestyles, with more regular visits and fewer journeys by car.”

She said that Ingka Centres will be seeking out further sites across major cities in Europe and North America, combining a smaller format IKEA anchor with community retail and services in a mix dependent on the location. For San Francisco that will include co-working, space for local entrepreneurs and a new food concept.

Malls As Community Spaces

“The important thing is to create places which are of their community and where everyone is welcome,” she said. “Meeting places are more important than ever, we have to get away from this idea of either/or for online and physical space. We completely believe in building places where people will create memories together. Livat is designed to be both of the community and a destination.”

Indeed, the launch of Livat Hammersmith is a significant milestone in Ingka Centres’ $5.65 billion global expansion, following the opening of four new meeting places in China, as well as the recent unveiling of plans for two centres in India. A second urban meeting place is already in development at 945 Market Street in downtown San Francisco and a third at the Aura Retail Podium at 382 Yonge Street, Toronto. 

The move also marks the start of $1.35 billion investment in London over the next three years, with the headline act a new IKEA store on Oxford Street, to open in Fall 2023, plus new delivery services, such as Collect Near You Lockers – a collaboration with Shift and Access Self Storage available to customers living within a 45km radius of a locker. The service will cost $13.50 – free for orders over $270 – with two pilot sites live and three in planning. If successful, the roll out will see 20 sites added across London by the end of 2022, with the city to be used as a test-bed for innovation.

Peter Jelkeby, country retail manager and chief sustainability officer, IKEA U.K. & Ireland, said: “As one of the most innovative and exciting markets in the world for retail and e-commerce, we will step up our omni-channel investments in London with a simple goal: to become more customer centric.”