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Word on the street is that Swedish retailer Ikea is thinking about finally building a store in Ohio and is currently considering the three big metro areas… Cleveland, Cincinnati, and the perfectly centrally-located retail-driven test-market-haven known as the greater Columbus Metropolitan area. Which of these three areas do YOU think would be the best fit for Ikea?
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- cheap: i highly recommend the Millersport sweet corn festival of course,the cor
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- bucki12: I like the business model, but the internet sales part seems like something
- racheltb: I don't see the Ohio Shrimp Fest on the list. It is truly a good time. h
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Ikea Contemplates Ohio Store, Potentially in Columbus
By: Walker
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Hmmm. I think Columbus makes the most sense out of the three cities. Toledo people will go to the Detroit one, and maybe even Cleveland’ers.
If they put one in Cleveland I’d still go to the Pittsburgh one.
I agree that Columbus makes the most sense location-wise in Ohio.
I wonder why that’s even a tough decision for them — maybe they don’t want to tick off Clevelanders especially who might think they “deserve” it more?
Clevelanders are only what… 1/10th of the state population? I don’t think they’d need to worry about pissing off 10% of the state. A central location makes the most sense to me. Go for Columbus! 8)
Eh, if you include the metro population of Cleveland it is over 3,000,000. Still, if they don’t like it, they can go to the Michigan one. Columbus will have people from Cincy, Dayton, Indianapolis, Louisville, Lexington, and other areas of those states be put much closer than the current situation.
Ok, i just looked it up…
But anyway… I still think a central location (Columbus) to the population of the ENTIRE state (and beyond) would be a better choice.
i would love to have one in columbus… but realistically- i think that cincinnati would be the best place for one, if you look at existing store locations the north, west and east of ohio are somewhat covered- but not much to the south. a cincy store would be close for columbus and draw a good number if it has good access to i-75. i know i’ll go to it regardless where they place it, maybe having one locally wouldn’t be such a good thing for me in the long run?
The population of the entire state of KY is roughly 4 million :P And I think that is pushing it. The majority of the population of KY is in Louisville, Lexington and NKY. All are under 3 hours drive to Columbus. I think Columbus is the better choice of the 3.
As much as I hate to say it Marcus may have a point. If they locate it on the outerbelt of Cincy on the north side, that gives easy access to Columbus and Indianapolis and a much shorter drive for Louisville people.
Ok, I’m going to figure this thing out. Map it all out and whatnot. How far would everyone say that people are willing to drive to go to an IKEA? 3 hours? 4 hours? 5 hours??? Let’s establish a number and figure out which of the 3 C’s would have the biggest reach.
I would say 4 hours tops….but its hard to say. I know my sister goes to school in South Carolina and has talked to people who have come all the way up from Tennesee to go to Easton.
Would probably only go 3 hours tops.
I’d go 3 hours max too… which is already what i do when i go to pittsburgh. So, i’d probably just keep going to pittsburgh unless the newer store was nicer & bigger.
I should clarify….I wouldn’t drive 4 hours. For just the store itself maybe an hour….maybe. Of course if I was going to Pittsburgh for a day for something else, I would stop by.
Which ever city is picked, it should still be closer for us than the one in Pittsburgh though.
Personally, I never understood driving 3 hours to go to a store that has a WEBSITE!!! C’mon people, it’s 2006! :D
I know that it’s better to look at things in person before buying them, but for me, I’ll keep going to http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/ unless they build a store within Columbus’ city limits.
How expensive is the stuff to ship?
Have you been to an IKEA? It’s a huge store. Lots of fun to walk around in and you can usually spend a whole day in there.
The thing that I like about their stores is that they have all the demo setups… the mock-rooms where you can see how all of their store items work together and compliment each other. It’s two different things to see a throw pillow on a shelf with other throw pillows, and to see a throw pillow on a couch in an actual laid out living room. You might not think you like something until you see how it will look in use, and IKEA stores nail that concept on the head. As much as I love the internet, you can’t really replicate that online. And I can’t think of any other large department stores that do this to the extent that IKEA does.
As for shipping it all depends on what you’re buying. A few small items are cool for me to order online, but if I’m going to buy a whole carload of junk I’d rather drive 3 hours to Pittsburgh and make a trip/adventure out of it.
I’m sure I’m the only person here who hasn’t been to it yet….but what is the crate and barrell like over at Easton? When I lived in Chicago I always liked walking through that store.
C&B is cool. I’m not a huge fan or anything since it really just feels like a higher-end version of the home/kitchen section at Target. Nice stuff if you like higher-end gear. It was a good replacement for the Virgin Megastore.
But yeah, Crate&Barrel is on a fraction of the size and a fraction of the selection of goods compared to what you can find at IKEA. The layout of C&B resembles more of a standard department store too.
IKEA sells practically nothing on their website. It isn’t that good.