IKEA Pallady, officially opened

The second IKEA store in Romania has opened its gates, welcoming the first customers on the beats of “We will rock you” hit on Monday morning, June 24. This is the largest IKEA store in Southeastern Europe and the 431st one in the world.

“We are happy to continue our journey here in Romania, and to celebrate today the opening  of IKEA Pallady, the largest IKEA store in Southeastern Europe and the second one in Romania. We are super proud of what we’ve done here. IKEA Romania posted a growth of almost 11 percent last year and we are very proud of this result and we are more than optimistic that we’ll continue to grow with an excellent performance in the future. By opening this store, we are responding to the ever growing number of customers in Romania. This is an investment of around EUR 90 million and we created around 600 new jobs,” said Sara Del Fabbro, CEO al IKEA South East Europe, who was present at today opening ceremony and at the symbolic  planting tree ceremony, along Vladislav Lalic, Property and Expansion Manager IKEA South East Europe, Cas Lachaert, Store Manager al IKEA Pallady.

Swedish ambassador to Romania Anneli Lindahl Kenny and Ștefan-Radu Oprea, Romanian minister for Business Environment and Entrepreneurship were also attending.

The Pallady IKEA store stretches on 37,000 square meters and provides almost 10,000 products reflecting the IKEA philosophy with a democratic design mixing shape, functionality, quality, sustainability and low pricing.

The new store provides three complete interior design patterns and 58 rooms revamped based on knowledge about Romanians’ needs.

Besides the well-known playground for children, the store is also hosting the famous IKEA restaurant with a capacity of 550 seats, and cafe, as a novelty.

The unit is served by 1,300 parking lots, part of them underground, but also four charging stations for electric cars.

The store is also providing a buy-back service which allows customers to bring their IKEA wore-out furniture items and to get a voucher in exchange.

Since the Pallady store has been opened at 10:00 a.m. until 15:00p.m., 7,000 customers had visited it, with sales of over RON 310,000 being reported, with an  average value of the shopping cart of over RON 150.