Ikea to expand online sales facility at Wednesbury store
Swedish furniture giant Ikea expanding its ‘click and collect’ service at its Wednesbury store due to booming online sales.
Walsall Council has given the green light for the company to extend its temporary single-storey building at the Park Lane site for an initial 36 months.
This is the second year in a row Ikea is taking such action after erecting extra temporary storage lockers for customers to collect their goods ordered off the website.
The new building will give the Wednesbury store more space to store items which are waiting to be collected.
In its application, the company said more than a third of the store’s sales were now coming from online customers.
The temporary building erected last year contains 110 collection lockers, and the new storage facility will be situated adjacent will be 300 square metres.
Planning agents Quod said: “Ikea are experiencing growing online sales and are rolling out C&C facilities at their existing sites to meet demand.
“Of the Wednesbury store’s total sales, 29 per cent are now made online and this is anticipated to increase to 35 per cent by the end of the 2022 financial year.
“To meet their growing online sales, consent was granted in July 2021 for a temporary click and collect (C&C) building and storage lockers for a period of 36 months east of the home delivery warehouse.
“Both facilities have been installed and the additional storage space has enabled the store to hold up to 110 customer orders from the C&C service.
“However, demand is continually increasing and there is a need to extend the temporary C&C building to meet ongoing growing demand.
“The C&C service provides a convenient option for customers to collect their goods, following the placing of an order at home or on the go, from a dedicated building outside the store.
“It provides a facility for Ikea customers who do not wish to visit the store. The C&C building simply stores the goods that are collected by the customer.
“Customers do not enter the building, they park in an existing allocated C&C parking space and Ikea staff present them with their order.
“There is no transaction undertaken within the building itself and it, therefore, functions simply as a storage facility.”
