Swedish style huge hit here

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 24/03/2015 (3833 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ask IKEA Canada’s new president what he knows about Winnipeg and he shakes his head.

“Not much,” said Stefan Sjstrand. “Except the Winnipeg Jets, of course. Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson. I can see the logo in front of me. It’s quite a famous logo in Sweden.”

The trailblazing Swedes put Winnipeg on the map in Scandinavia in 1974 when they joined the maverick WHA team and joined Bobby Hull to form the “hot line,” one of the most prolific and influential trios in hockey history.

Sjstrand is also quick to rhyme off others from his homeland who brought their skates to Winnipeg, including Lars-Erik Sjoberg, Kent Nilsson, Willy Lindstrom and Thomas Steen. And while he might not know much about our fur-trading origins, our stable housing market or even the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, he knows our tastes in furniture and shopping habits.

For example, there have been five million customer visits since the south Winnipeg IKEA store opened in late 2012.

“We have a 13 per cent market share in Winnipeg. This is the strongest market share we have in Canada. We are very satisfied with that. If you look at how many people live in Winnipeg and Manitoba, it shows that they like IKEA,” he said.

This sort of performance isn’t all that surprising considering that during Winnipeg’s many years in the IKEA wilderness, it was routinely one of the company’s leading mail-order markets.

It took decades for Winnipeg to finally land an IKEA store, so it’s highly unlikely another one will be on the drawing board. Sjstrand was reluctant to talk about where stores would or wouldn’t go across the country, preferring instead to focus on how the do-it-yourself furniture giant can become more accessible to Manitobans and Canadians.

That includes some remodelling to stores — it recently overhauled its kitchen department in Winnipeg — and is looking at improving the interface on its e-commerce site.

He said local staffers have done their best to ensure the store reflects Winnipeggers’ needs and tastes. For example, it is the only store in the country with a room setting specifically dedicated to outfitting cottages.

Conducting home visits in Winnipeg has also shown them the extreme temperatures from winter to summer mean people need places to store boots, scarves and parkas in the summer and summer gear in the winter.

Sjstrand is optimistic IKEA will get the green light on its recent application to serve beer and wine at its 650-seat restaurant, the biggest in Winnipeg.

‘If you look at how many people live in Winnipeg and Manitoba, it shows that they like IKEA’

He said the company doesn’t have any numbers showing that imbibing while shopping for furniture increases sales.

“It’s more to complete the offering to customers who want to have a glass of wine or beer with their meals,” he said.

Assuming the company’s application gets the go-ahead — it already servers liquor in its other 11 Canadian stores — it would offer a variety of domestic and imported beer and wine — no spirits — but nothing from Sweden.

He smiled when asked about the company turning down a request by thousands of people in the Netherlands wanting to play hide-and-seek in a local store. While he appreciated the sentiment — and what it says about the company’s brand — he said there are simply too many safety issues in a building that doubles as a functioning warehouse to permit something like that.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca