IKEA launched its official online shopping mall at 6 am on October 16. Unlike the version two years ago (distributed to Shanghai only), the new online store offers delivery services to consumers in 35 cities.

“It’s just a trial operation.” Yang Fan, the public relations manager of IKEA Retail China, said that IKEA hopes that before a large influx of passengers, the process will be smooth enough. Some online customers encountered an unsolvable problem on October 7, and this problem was solved.

The first batch of 35 cities with open distribution services include 9 cities in Shanghai and Zhejiang Province, 13 cities in Jiangsu Province, 8 cities in Anhui Province and 4 cities in Jiangxi Province, excluding Beijing. These cities are located around the Yangtze River Delta and belong to the “East China Region” delineated by IKEA China. IKEA hopes that Shanghai's online business experience can be applied to these areas.

IKEA's overall sales in the Chinese market in FY 2018 exceeded RMB 14.7 billion, but the growth rate slowed down by 9.3% compared to FY2017, the first single-digit increase in four years. More than 98.3 million visitors to the offline shopping malls have slowed down.

Online business is seen as a new growth point, but logistics is one of the important challenges. The last mile of the home logistics to do "do not spend too much money, but also make money" is very challenging.

In China, IKEA established four central distribution centers (Shanghai, Tianjin, Chengdu, and Guangzhou) and three central parcel distribution centers (Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai) during the e-commerce preparation period. Goods purchased at the official online store will be sent from these logistics centers. However, it is not excluded that the distribution is directly carried out by the mall. During the pilot period in Shanghai, all goods were delivered by Shanghai Baoshan Shopping Center.

At the IKEA China 2019 financial media conference on August 16 this year, IKEA said that e-commerce services are expected to cover 149 cities by the end of this year.

（Source: JJgle.com）