Furniture

The great uniformity of apartment buildings from the Soviet era has proved to be a welcome inspiration for Ikea: in five stores, customers can use VR to give their apartment a virtual update. The tool may later be used in a number of other countries as well.

Next Thursday will be an all-important day for the Belgian branch of Dutch chain Blokker. The trade unions fear the announcement of new store closings, or an even worse fate for the chain...

Ikea is building a new, green city store in Vienna: there will be no parking, but the seven-storey building will have green balustrades and roofs with no less than 160 trees.

Beter Bed seems to be doing better again now that the company is rid of its German subsidiary Matratzen Concord. In the fourth quarter, organic sales from continuing operations increased by 4.7%. 

Dutch retailer Blokker has once again incurred substantial losses, and turnover almost halved. Still, its CEO sees "improvements" - and important issues with its online and Belgian activities. 

Swedish furniture chain Ikea has opened a pop-up store in Eindhoven (the Netherlands), that wants to attract attention to its smart products. However, the store is more like a showroom, with customers unable to physically purchase and take home the smart products.

Ikea has had to admit a 10 % profit drop this year, due to higher prices of raw materials and investments in new concepts. Nevertheless, the Swedish retail chain wants to continue to maintain a high level of innovation in the future.