By Mark Wineka
mwineka@salisburypost.com
CHARLOTTE ó Welcome to the land of Ikea.
Put on your most comfortable shoes.
Grab a map, pencil, tape measure and reusable shopping bag.
Stretch out on a bed. Let the kids try out a sofa.
Make room in your stomach for Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam.
Prepare to sharpen your Allen wrench skills.
Ikea has landed in Charlotte, bringing its unique Swedish brand of home furnishings retailing to a region starved for jobs and any good economic news.
With its grand opening next Wednesday morning, Ikea will deliver on the jobs. The 356,000-square foot store off City Boulevard will employ more than 400.
Thousands of customers are expected to flock to the new center ó so much so that the company is allowing visitors to line up outside the entrance as early as 9 a.m. Monday, 48 hours before the opening.
The Charlotte store ó heavy in the blue and yellow colors of the Swedish national flag ó is Ikea’s 36th in the United States, fifth in the Southeast and 294th in the world.
The company works on a simple business model of offering a wide range of functional home furnishings at affordable prices.
For many of the exclusively designed home furnishings displayed in a massive second-floor showroom, that means the buyers pick up their flat-packed items later in the self-serve warehouse, lift them into their vehicles and put them together at home.
More than once Wednesday, tour guides for a press preview of the new store repeated an Ikea mantra that says, “You do a little, we do a little, and together we save a lot.”
Even in the 350-seat restaurant and cafe, positioned halfway through the Ikea shopping experience, customers are asked to bus their own tables so prices can stay affordable.
The restaurant offers breakfast priced between 99 cents and $1.99 and a lunch of Swedish meatballs, lingonberries, potatoes and cream sauce for $4.99.
“It’s a different shopping experience,” said Jackie DeChamps, human resources manager for Ikea Charlotte. “… It may seem intimidating, but it’s not. Customers really can do this.”
When she set up her new office in Charlotte, she was expected to assemble her furniture, just as a customer would at home.
The Charlotte store is one of Ikea’s biggest. It has three distinct areas ó the showroom, marketplace and self-serve warehouse ó and DeChamps says it’s best to follow the routing maps, especially for first-timers.
She called it the Yellow Brick Road.
Visitors take an escalator up to the showroom, filled with 49 different room settings In addition, the second-floor showroom has three model home interiors.
Customers are encouraged to test everything out. And virtually every item has a price tag, which holds a vital key to the whole IKEA shopping experience.
If you see something you want to purchase, the price tag tells you the aisle and bin number where you can pick that item up in the warehouse. A customer can write down the important information on his or her shopping list, which is part of the map.
“You can pretty much buy everything you see,” DeChamps explained.
The showroom includes complete furnishings for living rooms, closets, offices, kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms and children’s rooms.
The marketplace on the first floor has items ready for purchase under section headings such as cooking and eating, textiles and rugs, bathroom, home organization, lighting, prints and frames, home decoration and a greenroom. It all leads to the gargantuan self-serve warehouse.
In the warehouse, which leads to the checkout counters and a bistro and Swedish food market, most of the items are flat-packed, making them easier to transport home.
Ikea’s more iconic pieces of furniture are probably the Swedish Poang armchair, the Bookcase Billy and Lack tables.
Ikea stores encourage parents to bring the kids. They offer a supervised kids’ play area called Smaland, where kids can play on rounded stone fences, inside a big clog and under a giant spruce tree.
The store makes strollers available and its baby care facilities even include bottle warmers.
For the customers fearful that the total Ikea experience isn’t for them, the store offers delivery, assembly and installation services, kitchen and office planning and financing.
Anyone within 40 miles of an Ikea store will only be charged $69 for home delivery, no matter how much is purchased.
Stores have an “As Is” department near the checkouts where assembled but damaged items are brought back, repaired and recycled at discount prices. Ikea also has a parts library where missing hardware can be picked up for free.
Notes: Ingvar Kamprad founded the company in 1943. He grew up on a farm called Elmtaryd in the parish Agunnaryd. Ikea’s name comes from the first letters of Ingvar, Kamprad, Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd … Ikea had sales of $31 billion globally in fiscal year 2008, including $3.1 billion in the United States … The top five Ikea sales countries are Germany, 15 percent; United States, 10 percent; France, 10 percent, United Kingdom, 7 percent; and Sweden, 6 percent … Ikea stores have everything the company offers for sale, while its catalog has about 30 percent … The store incorporates blocks of Tundra flooring throughout the showroom to illustrate its durability and 15-year warranty … The children’s interactive area in the showroom encourages “realistic play” and items that don’t require batteries … Many of the Ikea settings are designed for living in small spaces, often a reality in major metropolitan areas … Wednesday’s grand opening will include a log-sawing, a good-luck tradition in Sweden … The U.S., Swedish and N.C. flags will be raised at the grand opening … Live entertainment will begin at 6 a.m. Wednesday for customers in line.