Ikea came into my house. Here's what they said - and why NZ is a prime market for the Swedish furniture giant

Sunday, 12 November 2023

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A look inside my wardrobe, the fridge and pantry. Inside my daughter’s play-kitchen cupboards. Not even the garden shed was off limits for home furnishing representatives of Swedish furniture giant Ikea and its two-hour sweep of my suburban north Auckland home.

Last week, Ikea put me through the home visit study it is conducting up and down the country in 500 homes. Part of qualitative market research, a process it says it carries out when launching into any new market, looking at how people live and what they own provides fruitful insights to help it gauge what products to stock its new stores with – and how.

About 40 Ikea home furnishing experts have been flown in from Australia to carry out the home visits in groups of three, visiting on average three homes per day over three-weeks.

Ikea says it is all about understanding the home furnishing needs and desires of New Zealanders. The results will have a big part to play in how it will display and decide what products make it to this side of the Tasman.

Interestingly, Ikea has been operating in Australia for over 50 years, with one store in every state except Tasmania. It has more than 460 stores worldwide spread across 59 countries. I’m still surprised it has taken this long to commit to a New Zealand store.

Before the visit, I was asked not to tidy up. I was told Ikea wanted to see my house before I tidied up – where I put my keys and, naturally, where I would put items around my home. Unmanicured and what the house would look like if I didn’t have visitors.

Perhaps if they knew the ways of my little person and her desire to see all her toys at once on the floor, they may have withheld that prerequisite. Or maybe that kind of I-can’t-see-the-floor mess is a dream for storage solution-based Ikea.

Admittedly, with a 2-year-old living in the house, and for my own pride, I had to tidy a little.

I was told the visit would take two hours, people would take notes and photos. The information would then be collected for research, turned into a visual resource and shared internally.

Three Ikea representatives came round. The first thing they asked was if they should take their shoes off outside. From there they quickly got into questions about how I live, what I own and open-ended questions that shone a light on who lived in my house and generally how we lived. The tables were turned, and it felt unnatural for me being the one answering questions in interview-style communication.

How I, and other New Zealanders live, is valuable information for Ikea.

Right off the bat, it felt like Ikea was trying to get to know me. Asking me questions that often had me feeling uncomfortable and wondering how honest I should be.

Christine Gough, head of interior design at Ikea Australia, asked me what I love about my home, what’s my favourite item and why, where my favourite place is in the home, and what frustrates me about my home. She says those are the top five questions they asked everyone.

Things progressed relatively quickly from there into the types of things you talk to your friends about. What do you do in the evenings? And, she had no qualms asking me what activities I do most of in the bedroom.

For a while, the Ikea team was intrigued by my “non-traditional” free-standing LED lamp. Apparently, it is unique to New Zealand that we’re not big users of bedside table lamps.

They were also fascinated by my garage and, I don’t even know what it is called, but some DIY fandangle we constructed that lets us put a sail shade up over the decking in the summer.

There was a silence when I opened my garden shed. I couldn’t quite interpret if it was a silence of excitement or one of disbelief. Perhaps the insights gold that Ikea hopes for during these visits?

A jammed-packed disorganised mess of unexpected proportions. For me that was.

My pride took a hit when I opened the aluminium door to garden equipment and household junk stacked up high on top of an old computer chair debuting an old microwave, tents, beach mats and general junk propping up the strimmer – the only item in the shed used in a while. Not an area of the property I ever really go near, I remember thinking my husband has really put me in it this time.

Out came the smartphone for the next round of photos. Prime exhibit number one on why time-poor messy New Zealanders like me need Ikea to organise their junk in a fashionable manner. That photo will make the visual Ikea NZ market research report, I’m sure of it. They told me not to worry and that they drop the names and identities of the people behind the photos when included in the records.

Ikea tells me that the number of New Zealand homes visited is far more than what they have done anywhere else in the world ahead of a new market launch. Typically, it is between 100 and 200.

Gough says Ikea is determined to get the New Zealand launch right. She says the home visits are about learning as much as they can about New Zealanders and ultimately what they would buy from Ikea.

“We really, really want to know you and what you’re doing.”

Gough says Ikea ordinarily conducts about 100 home visits each year to make sure it stays on top of trends, changes in people’s lifestyles and what they may need, with a forward-looking approach, trying to play the long game and be at least two years ahead of the market to set trends.

“The home is definitely used more than it ever was before,” says Gough, discussing post-Covid living situations and changed consumer behaviour driven by the pandemic.

Ikea began conducting its home visits over 50 years ago in the 1970s, an idea born on the back of declining sofa sales, thought up as a strategy to regain profitability.

It is a model that worked back then to turnaround sofa sales and continues to be a proven model today, Gough says. “It changed how we do product design and product development.

“If people tell us they don’t love a certain thing, then we would stop doing that, and innovate our solutions to look like something else or be something else.”

Gough says Ikea sells close to 10,000 products in its stores around the world.

So far, it has conducted just over 300 home visits in Aotearoa.

Key characteristics of New Zealand homes picked up in the research so far show that the garage isn’t used to store the car, deckings and outdoor spaces are central to Kiwi living and the entryways of New Zealand homes are “very different” compared to other markets, says Gough.

“[Here] the garage is considered an extension of the home. That is really different compared to other markets, even Australia. People are parking their cars in them, usually, but here it doesn’t seem to be a thing.”

Not to mention, the garage is often where the laundry gets done.

Gough says a common desire from New Zealanders in its findings suggest they want more storage for a tidier garage.

“When we do home visits and go in to talk to people about what they are doing, they are doing the same things.

“What you’re doing on a day-to-day basis and how you’re in your kitchen cooking is not really different from somebody else we might meet. But where you are storing your foods, and the types of foods you’re cooking is fascinating to us.”

That type of information is then used to make decisions around how Ikea displays certain products in a store in a certain area, and different to how it would somewhere else, says Gough.

She says Ikea is all about trying to be “as locally relevant as possible”.

Ikea says New Zealand homes have a lot of windows compared to other markets, and we highly value outdoor living spaces, so commercial windows and outdoor furniture will be key product ranges it will probably highlight in its Sylvia Park mega store, set to open in time for Christmas 2025.

The retail giant sells everything from kitchens and wardrobes, doors and furniture, toys, lighting, home furnishing accessories and linen, humidifiers, appliances, tech gadgets and plants.

In my house, Gough says she is pleasantly surprised to see that I have incorporated my daughter into all aspects of my home. A chalk board on the wall and play kitchen in the living room, with all rooms of the house catering to her in some way, rather than a dedicated space in the house just for her. That is an insight she says Ikea “would take a lot from”.

Storage is another “big one” in my house. I interpreted that to mean I need more of it for better organisation, and Gough is surprised to see no shoes in my wardrobe. Apparently, I am one of a minority to keep my shoes separate from my clothes. We have a coat and shoe cupboard by the front door.

At least that's one tick from the Ikea interior design gurus.