Influencer Sadie Silva walks through the new Ikea planning studio set up inside the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center on the far West Side. The location, which opened Wednesday, is the first in Texas and one of the first in the nation showcasing Ikea and Best Buy’s cross-brand retail experience.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
San Antonio homeowners looking to redo their kitchens have a new option for getting everything under one roof — from design help to new appliances and cabinets.
Ikea has teamed up with Best Buy to create the Swedish furniture giant’s first cross-brand retail experience — and one of the first in the nation featuring the retail fusion has just opened on San Antonio’s far West Side.
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The collaboration with Best Buy is part of Ikea’s efforts to improve its accessibility to customers.
“This is exactly what we heard from the customer, the desire for convenience and accessibility, which is what this solution will help us provide,” said Rob Olson, chief operating officer of Ikea U.S. “This puts us in the consumers’ neighborhood, where they can come and take the time to sit down and plan a kitchen or, just as they’re passing by, to order a Billy bookcase.”
Ikea employees work in the new Ikea planning studio located inside the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center on the far West Side. Customers shopping at the Best Buy can now browse the Ikea catalog, order items for in-store pickup and get design help.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Best Buy’s store in the Alamo Ranch shopping center is the first Texas site to feature the shop-in-a-shop fusion. The location also is one of only two Best Buys where customers can order and pick up any Ikea product or return a purchase. The other one is in Florida.
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The Best Buy at 4970 W. U.S. 290 in South Austin is scheduled to open its Ikea shop on Nov. 17, as are Best Buys in Hulen and Mesquite. A fifth Texas site, at a Best Buy in Humble, is expected to open later this winter. Ikea and Best Buy also have teamed up at five stores in Florida.
The Alamo Ranch shop-in-a-shop features a 1,000-square-foot vignette of a kitchen and laundry setup featuring Ikea furnishings and Best Buy appliances.
Magdalena Mendez, an interior decorator and influencer, checks out the new Ikea planning studio at Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center on the far West Side.
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Influencer Emerald Villarreal, left, films her friend Sadie Silva showing off an Ikea tote bag as they check out the new Ikea planning studio set up inside the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Influencer Sadie Silva laughs Wednesday as she is filmed looking through a kitchen set-up inside the new Ikea planning studio at the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Influencers Darlene Davila, from left, Sadie Silva and Emerald Villarreal share laughs while browsing the new Ikea planning studio set up in the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Influencer Darlene Davila walks through the new Ikea planning studio set up inside the Alamo Ranch Best Buy.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
The new Ikea planning studio, located inside the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center, showcases kitchen, dining and storage options for customers to explore. Customers shopping at the Best Buy can now browse the Ikea catalog, order items for in-store pickup and get design help.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
The new Ikea planning studio, located inside the Best Buy in Alamo Ranch, San Antonio, showcases kitchen, dining and storage options for customers to check out.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
People walk through the new Ikea planning studio set up inside the Alamo Ranch Best Buy. Customer can check out how Best Buy appliances fit into Ikea-designed kitchen vignettes. They also can get design help from Ikea employees on redoing their kitchen or laundry space while also checking out how Best Buy’s appliances would work in the space.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
The new Ikea planning studio is located inside the Alamo Ranch Best Buy on the far West Side. Customers can shop for Ikea’s home decor options while also browsing Best Buy’s tech options.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
Ikea U.S. employees will be on-site to help customers design their spaces — before or after browsing Best Buy’s appliances for refrigerators, microwaves, ranges, dishwashers, washers and dryers to put in their kitchen and laundry room plans.
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“We’ve integrated, for example, a cooktop and range hood into that experience to inspire customers with what’s possible, but also have a springboard or a jumping-off point to have a deeper conversation on appliances if the exact thing that’s in the vignette isn’t right for that customer,” aid Patrick McGinnis, Best Buy’s chief merchandising officer.
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The affordable furniture retailer already has a 289,000-square-foot location in Live Oak, which opened in 2019, and a 306,000-square-foot site in Round Rock. In July, it opened its first small-format store in Texas in San Marcos.
The collaboration with Best Buy will help Ikea reach customers who might have been hesitant to make the trek to its other locations — or to pay the high delivery fees.
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“We wanted to find opportunities where customers are already coming together,” Olson said. “We’re able to drive more visitation for all the retailers here in the market with our presence, and in turn attract new customers that are already shopping here.”
The new Ikea planning studio, located inside the Best Buy in the Alamo Ranch shopping center on the far West Side, showcases kitchen, dining and storage options for customers to explore while shopping for appliances, home theaters and tech supplies.
Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News
For Best Buy, the goal of the new in-store experience is to “create exciting and inspiring reasons for customers to come into stores,” McGinnis said.
The tech brand reported that in the second quarter, comparable sales increased by 1.6% year-over-year, but sales of home theaters, appliances, tablets and drones declined. Consumer visits to existing stores also were down by 1.2% year-over-year during the second quarter, according to a report from Placer.ai, which tracks retail foot traffic.
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In its latest earnings report, Ikea reported a 1% dip in sales year-over-year as it lowered prices by 10% over the last two years to help offset inflation. But its store visits rose by nearly 2% — the retailer’s fifth consecutive year of growth.
Both Ikea and Best Buy have raised prices on some products due to higher tariffs on imports.
Ikea said it chose Texas and Florida for its 10-store pilot program with Best Buy to “densify” its reach in these areas. The brands also will be checking the results in these markets to determine whether to expand the retail collaboration.
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“Across the U.S., we’ve been adding smaller-format solutions, and we saw both Texas and Florida as growth opportunities and areas where we had the right teams in place to meet the customers in such an amazing way, and thought these were two good locations to start with,” Olson said.
Big V Property Group, which owns Alamo Ranch, expects that the partnership will bring a new set of customers to the retail center. Its Deerbrook shopping center in Humble, near Dallas, will be home to the fifth collaborative shopping experience opening in Texas.
“To me, this is a kind of a testament to the quality of the real estate as they picked two of our centers in great locations and markets in Texas to try this pilot program out,” said Greg Ix, executive vice president of Big V.
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