Sales in the year to end-August increased by 5.9pc to €28.7 billion (£22.9 billion), compared to the 3.1pc growth clocked in fiscal 2013, largely driven by Chinese consumers and online shoppers. Sales in comparable stores grew by 3.6pc, up from last year’s 1.8pc.
“We continue to see positive signs in consumer spending and it’s a great joy to report growth in almost all our markets, not least in the challenging markets in Southern Europe”, said Peter Agnefjäll, Ikea’s CEO.
As part of its mission to hit annual sales of €50 billion by 2020, Ikea is continuing its expansion with plans to open stores in India and to boost its online presence in existing markets. E-commerce is Europe’s fastest growing retail market, according to the Centre for Retail Research, which estimates that online sales in Europe will increase by a fifth this year to reach £111.2 billion, about half of what e-commerce in the US is worth. Ikea’s biggest markets are Germany, the US and France.
Some 1.5 billion people visited Ikea.com this year, while 716 million people shopped in store.
Shopping via catalogue is still a core part of Ikea's business. The company prints more than 200 million copies in dozens of languages, making it more than twice as widely distributed as the Bible.
The retailer has become so iconic that it plans to open a museum next year at the site of its first store, about 60 miles north of Malmo, Sweden.
Ikea estimates that one tenth of all furniture bought in the UK comes from its shelves - and that one in every five British children was conceived on an Ikea mattress.
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