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Ikea branch in China: Goods are on average nine percent more expensive
Photo: LiGe / VCG via Getty Images
The move affects "all product ranges and all countries": The furniture retailer Ikea wants to raise prices sharply and justifies this with the consequences of the corona crisis.
Price increases would vary significantly from country to country, as the costs are very different in the individual countries, said a spokesman for Ikea Germany on Thursday in Hofheim-Wallau.
However, price increases of nine percent on a global average are planned.
As a reason, Ikea cited the consequences of the pandemic, which are being felt more and more clearly around the world.
So far, Ikea has succeeded in "absorbing the massive increases in costs along the value chain without increasing the prices for our products."
Increases already indicated
But the company is not immune to the upward trend.
"That is why we are also increasing the prices of our products for the first time since the global price increases began." There was no information on the planned price increases in Germany or for individual products.
Germany boss Denis Balslev had already announced price increases at the beginning of December - with reference to globally disrupted supply chains, higher transport costs and high raw material prices, for example for wood, metal and foam.
Ikea Germany recently felt the consequences of the pandemic with temporarily closed furniture stores and online competition.
In the past financial year 2021 (until August 30), the company lost sales in its most important single market worldwide and had to surrender market share for the first time in a long time.
At 5.3 billion euros, sales fell 3.2 percent short of the record year 2020.
Ikea had recently started a comprehensive restructuring of the group and worked intensively on its own online strategy.
The company recently also tested leasing concepts for furniture.
However, the company had recently made headlines with furniture that allegedly used suspicious wood.
A study sowed corresponding doubts about the sustainability label.
apr / dpa
