Ikea coming to Jacksonville

[duvaldude08]

We already figured it, but here it is.

IKEA expands in South Florida, but when will it come to Jacksonville?
Jacksonville Business Journal by Ashley Gurbal Kritzer, Reporter
Date: Friday, August 24, 2012, 8:15am EDT - Last Modified: Friday, August 24, 2012, 9:51am EDT
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South Florida Business Journal
IKEA USA will not be expanding in Jacksonville any time soon.
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Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Reporter- Jacksonville Business Journal
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The South Florida Business Journal’s report that IKEA USA will build a second store in the Miami area â€" 40 miles from an existing store â€" begged the question: When will the Swedish home goods mega-retailer open a Jacksonville store?
For Swedish meatball and lingonberry enthusiasts, the answer is unfortunate: Not any time soon.
Joseph Roth, a spokesman for IKEA USA, said he noticed posts on Facebook asking “What about Jacksonville?” when the Miami plans were announced.
“Basically it comes down to population size, and you tend to need approx 2 million people within a 40 to 60-mile radius or trade area,” Roth said. “And you guys aren’t there yet.”
That’s the biggest deciding factor in the store’s expansion plans.
“If you don’t have population size, you don’t really get to the second point,” he said. “It’s basically our stores are so large, they’re very expensive to build and need lots of customers to support them.”
There will now be four IKEA stores between Orlando and Miami: IKEA Orlando, IKEA Tampa, IKEA Sunrise, which is north of Miami, and the new IKEA Miami, to be built in Sweetwater.
“We get inquiries from developers and brokers all the time from Jacksonville, and they say, ‘What can we do?’” Roth said. “Well, double your population. It’s nothing personal. We recognize we have many customers up there, but not enough to support a large IKEA store.”

Administrator's notice: Thread title changed from "Ikea wont expand in Jacksonville due to population" to "Ikea coming to Jacksonville".

[thelakelander]

Now that's a reality check!

[fsquid]

Never have gotten the appeal of IKEA.  The few things we have from there are pretty shit.  Only thing worth a damn was a flower light for my kid's bedroom

[Adam W]

That's a shame, but I guess it make sense. Or cents 

Jax metro might have a decent population, but the population density is pretty low (for a city of its size). I remember driving to Atlanta just to get cheap IKEA furniture. I think Orlando must be a big improvement, by comparison.

[Adam W]

Never have gotten the appeal of IKEA.  The few things we have from there are pretty shit.  Only thing worth a damn was a flower light for my kid's bedroom

Their lights are the best things they have, usually. Some of the only stuff they sell that's not made of particleboard or MDF or whatever you call it.

I think the appeal of IKEA is that it's cheap and stylish - you can get furniture that looks good for very little money. It won't last, though - and your apartment will look like everyone else's. They do also have higher-end stuff (I think it's their Stockholm range) that's well made, using cutting-edge materials like actual wood.

[ben says]

Never have gotten the appeal of IKEA.  The few things we have from there are pretty shit.  Only thing worth a damn was a flower light for my kid's bedroom

Agree.

Went there to get a bed last year. When it was all said and done, I spent about the same as I would have spent buying a bed from any other store, except with IKEA I had to haul everything home, put it together, and it fell apart about 8 months later. Particle board crap.

[thelakelander]

That's a shame, but I guess it make sense. Or cents 

Jax metro might have a decent population, but the population density is pretty low (for a city of its size). I remember driving to Atlanta just to get cheap IKEA furniture. I think Orlando must be a big improvement, by comparison.

Jax is and has always been a second tier metropolitan area by population.  We tend to think we a larger than what we really our because we've essentially annexed all of our inner ring suburbs.  However, there are some exceptions to IKEA's "2 million" rule in the south.

Largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the South by 2011 Population

1. Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX - 6,526,548**

2. Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX - 6,086,538**

3. Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV - 5,703,948**

4. Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL - 5,670,125**

5. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA - 5,359,205**

6. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL - 2,824,724**

7. San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX - 2,194,927

8. Orland-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL - 2,171,360**


Not There Yet

9. Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill, NC-SC - 1,795,472**

10. Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX - 1,783,519**

11. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, VA-NC - 1,679,894

12. Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin, TN - 1,617,142

13. Jacksonville, FL - 1,360,251

14. Memphis, TN - 1,325,605

15. Louisville, KY - 1,294,849

16. Richmond, VA - 1,269,380

17. New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner, LA - 1,191,089

18. Raleigh-Cary, NC - 1,163,515

19. Birmingham-Hoover, AL - 1,132,264

20. Baton Rouge, LA - 808,242

**- Has an existing Ikea

[fsujax]

Who cares. What is the big deal about this place? We need to double our population? Charlotte and Austin are not double our population according to the numbers above.

[mtraininjax]

Who cares. What is the big deal about this place? We need to double our population? Charlotte and Austin are not double our population according to the numbers above.

I am sure the PARKING NAZIs care, they want to know the number of parking spaces and whether IKEA would use adopted construction more than what business IKEA could and would bring to our great city. Love the priorities of some here.

FSUJAX - I agree, who really cares, their loss as far as I am concerned.

[CityLife]

Who cares. What is the big deal about this place? We need to double our population? Charlotte and Austin are not double our population according to the numbers above.

They aren't solely looking at metro populations, but instead the trade area of a location. So you pick a spot and draw a radius around it for 40 or 60 miles. Charlotte's CSA is actually 2.6 million, so they likely easily meet the 2 million requirement.

Think about it this way, if you put an IKEA in northern St. Johns County, you could probably even get a little bit of Daytona/Ormond Beach included in the trade area.

[wsansewjs]

That's a lot of CRAP from the IKEA representative.

Jacksonville has 1.3 millions PLUS surrounding countries that should be able to push and support beyond than 2 million mark which should be sufficient enough for building an IKEA store in Jacksonville! You can have people coming in from as far as from Tallahassee, Savannah, Daytona Beach, Palatka, St. Johns, Nassau, even obviously Duval.

IKEA, look closer, and you will find there are more of us than you think.

-Josh

[CityLife]

They are a wildly successful multinational business. They didn't get that way by relying on hunches. If the data showed them they could be successful based on their business model in Jacksonville, they would open here. When the data shows them they could be successful, they will.

Hate to be a blunt realist, but that's reality.

[mtraininjax]

IKEA, look closer, and you will find there are more of us than you think.

Josh - Maybe Shad Khan can help? After all, he wants to make the Jags a bigger part of his business, so why not make it so that more people come to Jax, which will lead to more stuff here.

[tufsu1]

Who cares. What is the big deal about this place? We need to double our population? Charlotte and Austin are not double our population according to the numbers above.

They aren't solely looking at metro populations, but instead the trade area of a location. So you pick a spot and draw a radius around it for 40 or 60 miles. Charlotte's CSA is actually 2.6 million, so they likely easily meet the 2 million requirement.

Think about it this way, if you put an IKEA in northern St. Johns County, you could probably even get a little bit of Daytona/Ormond Beach included in the trade area.

except Daytona is probably already counted in the Orlando IKEA store's trade area...especially after they built a store in east Tampa, which probably siphons customers from the Lakeland area

[fieldafm]

This isn't exactly news.  Anyone familiar with their site criteria has known this for a very long time.