Ikea is firmly etched into the minds of U.S. consumers with its mammoth, suburban big-box stores, instantly recognizable along highways with their navy-blue exteriors bearing the retailer’s name in gigantic yellow letters. Its relatively affordable ready-to-assemble furniture, with its tough-to-pronounce names and countless umlauts, and its iconic meatballs have made the Swedish retailer an American fixture since it opened its first store here in 1985, outside Philadelphia.
But Ikea, whose stores tend to be on the outskirts of larger, more affluent cities, remains a relatively small U.S. furniture retailer and one truly well known by only a narrow sliver of the U.S. population four decades after entering this market. Last year, it took in $5.5 billion in sales, much less than rivals like Wayfair and about as much as West Elm and Pottery Barn put together. That’s a tiny fraction of the $253 billion home furnishing market.
