JOHOR BAHRU, 17 Nov 2017:
The largest Ikea store in Southeast Asia – located in Tebrau, Johor – is being thronged by shoppers from all over Johor since its doors were opened at 10am yesterday.
And the first customer to step into this really large Ikea store was Muhammad Ariff Akmal Razali, 25 – who was waiting since midnight for this opening.
“It is a historic day for Ikea Tebrau, this is the biggest store in Southeast Asia and the first in Southern Malaysia. I love Ikea and I wanted to be part of this history.
“I am excited this day has finally arrived! I will be exploring the store first and I plan to bring my whole family here this weekend.”
Latecomers swarming into this latest Ikea store had to be kept waiting outside at the carpark zone first to ensure patrons already inside could get a cosy experience. They were then let in by batches and the first two days saw up to almost 40,000 patrons daily.
On its first day of operation, Ikea said in a statement its Tebrau sold over 35,000 pieces of its famous Swedish meatballs and more than 10,800 curry puffs.
Spanning 502,815 sq ft (46,713 sqm), it features 54 Swedish inspired showrooms and over 8,000 well-designed, functional and affordable home furnishing solutions at a store that’s about three times larger than its first at Damansara.
Throughout this weekend, customers can enjoy special deals and in-store activities for the entire family such as face painting, balloon sculpture clowns and balloon giveaways, mascot appearances and more.
The store is open 10am to 10pm on Sunday – Thursday and later till 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays, public holidays (including eves) and replacement holidays which fall on Mondays.
Over the past few months, store manager Annie chandler said Ikea conducted numerous home visits. Insights gathered from these visits provided better understanding the life at home of Johoreans.
“We go to all extent to ensure our store, products and home furnishing inspirations appeals to local community. The home furnishing showcased at this store is well-suited for the local market and their increasingly urbanised lifestyle.
“With a team of over 300 co-workers, we are ready to serve more than 1.8 million customers residing within 60-minutes from the store and millions more beyond that.”
These include picking with delivery, assembly of furniture, home delivery, Ikea Gift Cards, 0% instalment payment plan, 100-day return policy, free WiFi and the ease of the Ikea Store App, to name a few.
To cater for the millions of customers in Southern Malaysia who can now enjoy the unique Ikea shopping experience, it has an enlarged cafeteria that can seat 750 at any one time and is equipped with 1,771 carpark lots.
For greater accessibility, Ikea is providing free shuttle services to the store from Larkin Sentral (in front of Selera Johor) and KTM Muzium (beside Johor Bahru Sentral).
On top of that, Ikea has partnered with Grab. Customers can use the promo code ‘IKEATEBRAU17’ to enjoy a RM8 discount for two Grab rides till Dec 31 – this promo code is valid for all Grab services in Johor Bahru.
