Sales at Ikea Ireland surge 16.5% amid surge in number of shoppers

Home furniture giant said strong performance was enabling it to lower prices

Visitors to Ikea's Ballymun's store increased by 4% to 3.2 million during the 2023 financial year. 

Sales at Ikea’s Irish operations surged 16.5% up to €252m during its latest financial year, with the company signalling it would start to lower prices following a drop in global transport and commodity prices.

The strong sales performance was reflected in the number of visitors to the Ballymun store growing 4% over the year to 3.2 million, as well as significant growth in the online business.

The company also attributed part of the sales growth to the opening of new "Plan and Order Points" across the country as well as improvements to its store.

Ikea said this strong performance was enabling it to lower prices, having already permanently lowered prices on more than 250 products.

Ikea Ireland market manager Martyn Allan said over the last couple of years the company has to deal with cost pressures like most businesses but that was “easing now”.

“With this, we've been able to lower a lot of our prices. So we lowered 250 of our best-selling articles in August, and our costs have come down again. So we'll increase that number in January, with many more prices that will be lowered,” he said.

Click-and-collect service

The company’s click-and-collect service grew to 644,000 products ordered online for collection during 2023, which is more than double the number of products compared to the previous year. 

Ikea’s online sales continued to increase as a proportion of all sales, growing to 33% — up from 29% during the course of 2022. 

The company plans on opening its first customer distribution centre next year in order to cut delivery times.

However, despite the positive figures, Marsha Smith, deputy chief executive of Ikea Ireland and UK, said there was “nothing to share at this time” when asked if there were any more full-sized Ikea stores on the horizon for Ireland.

As a result of the strong sales performance, Ikea Ireland said every staff member would now receive a bonus equivalent to at least five weeks' salary. The company employs 730 people in Ireland.

From January next year, all hourly paid Ikea Ireland co-workers will receive €14.80 an hour, which is above the minimum wage of €12.70 per hour. Salaried co-workers will receive an average 5% pay increase.

The company’s financial year ended at the end of August. The company’s financial records are still under audit and as such Ikea Ireland did not reveal its profits for the year.