Sawt Falasteen - Ikea hopes for furniture market improvement in 2026

During a recent visit to Paris to visit the Swedish chain's new city-centre shop, Inter Ikea chief Jon Abrahamsson Ring told AFP that 2025 is likely to be "challenging".

Inter Ikea is the main holding company that manages the brand concept and product design among other things.

France is the company's third biggest market following Germany and the United States. The French furniture market declined by 5.1 percent in 2024, according to the Institute of Furniture Studies and Forecasting.

Abrahamsson Ring said that whether in France or elsewhere it has been a tough period for furniture retailers.

"For the last two years, it's been a shrinking home furnishing spend across all our 63 markets."

Ikea is "very much looking forward to 2026", he said.

Ikea, which has an annual revenue of around $47 billion, is continuing to prioritise low prices and physical sales despite a boom in online shopping, he explained.

Online shopping accounted for 26 percent of its total sales in the 2024 fiscal year ending in August, compared to seven percent in 2019.

Meanwhile, Ikea's stores welcomed 899 million visitors in the 2024 fiscal year, a figure which is increasing.

Some 92 percent of Ikea customers shop both online and in-store, Abrahamsson Ring said.

"They are sitting at home, they do research online, they go to a store because they want to sit on a sofa, or lay on a bed, or touch something, and maybe talk to a" salesperson, he said.

Y.AlMasri--SF-PST