IKEA is multinational ready-to-assemble furniture and appliances for home and office that was founded in Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad in1943. Its headquarter is now in Delft, Netherlands, and it has been the world’s largest furniture retailer since 2008. The furniture retailer has over 400 stores in 50 countries (March 2021), had over 2.1 billion website visitors between September 2015 – August 2016, with over 12,000 products up for sale. The company started as a mail-order sales before selling furniture 5 years later and now offer other home accessories, goods, and service.
In this article, we will look at some major competing companies of IKEA across the world. These other companies with global market share are general or specialty retailers that provide the same or similar services to IKEA.
#1 American Wordmark
- Founded: 1980
- Headquarters: Winchester, Virginia, US
Need to Know
American Woodmark started out as far back as 1951 when a Long Island dentist, Alvin A.Goldhush, formed a dental cabinet manufacturing company, Formed Laminates, Inc., Lindenhurst, N.Y. It was later renamed Raygold industries, which was later acquired by Boise Cascade in 1971.
By 1980, the corporation, 4 of Boise Cascade’s executives – ill Brandt, Al Graber, Jeff Holcomb, and Don Mathias – staged a leveraged buy-out to form American Woodmark. Since then it has RSI in 2017.
The kitchen and bath cabinet manufacturer operates 18 manufacturing facilities in the USA – West Virginia, Georgia, Kentucky, Arizona, Tennessee, Indiana, Virginia, Maryland – and Mexico. They provide (manufacture and distribute) quality face frame kitchen and bath cabinetry for new constructions, remodeling, and specialty dealers.
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#2 Sears
- Founded: 1892
- Headquarters: Hoffman Estates, Illinois, US
Need to Know
Sears is a chain of discount department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck as a mail ordering catalog. It was acquired by Kmart in 2005 leading to the creation of Sears Holdings, post-merger. Kmart later filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2018; later announced it had won its Bankruptcy Auction in January 2019. Since then, stores are being closed down. Only 26 Sears stores were said to be open as of November 28, 2021.
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#3 Walmart
- Founded: 1962
- Headquarters: Bentonville, Arkansas, US
Need to Know
Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton in Rogers, Arkansas. It is now headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. With 10,566 stores (October 31, 2021) – supercenters (hypermarkets), grocery stores, and discount department stores – the American retail corporation is the world’s largest employer (2.2 million employees). According to Fortune Global 500, by revenue alone, Walmart is the world’s largest company – $548.743 billion – in 2020.
It operates in 24 countries across 5 Continents – The Americas (North, South, and Central America), Asia, and Africa – under 48 different names.
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#4 Pepperfry
- Founded: 2011
- Headquarters: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Need to Know
Pepperfry was founded in 2011 by Ambareesh Murty and Ashish, former eBay executives, in Mumbai, India. The company started operations as an online furniture and home decor marketplace before opening its first offline store in 2014; now has 70 stores in 28 cities across India; with warehouses in Bangalore, Mumbai, Jodhpur, and Delhi.
The retail corporation entered a home decoration partnership with Bosch, Kajaria, Hettich, Gyproc, Siemens in 2020, and has raised $240.5m in over 8 funding rounds
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#5 Tesco
- Founded: 1919
- Headquarters: Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, UK
Need to Know
Tesco was founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen in Hackney England. The multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer started operations as a group of market stalls out of Hackney. The retailer has 7,005 (2020) stores – hypermarkets, supermarkets, convenience shops, superstores – in 11 countries outside of the UK, and it is the 9th largest retailer in the world; based on revenue.
Tesco founder Cohen, came about the name after he bought shipments of tea from T. E. Stockwell; he used these 3 initials, combine with the first two letters of his last name – T. E. Stockwell COhen. A name that was first seen and used in 1924.
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#6 Wayfair
- Founded: August 2002
- Headquarters: 4 Copley Place, Boston. Massachusetts, USA
Need to Know
Wayfair is a furniture and home goods e-commerce company, founded by Niraj Shah and Steve Conine in August of 2020. The online retailer now has offices and warehouses (12 million square feet) in the United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany. In 2019, the company offered 14 million products from 11,000 worldwide suppliers to millions of people with a billion dollars marketing budget.
Wayfair currently operates five e-commerce stores; Wayfair, AllModern, Perigold, Birch Lane, and Joss & Main.
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#7 Amazon
- Founded: July 5, 1994
- Headquarters: Seattle, Washington, USA
Need to Know
Amazon is an international tech company that provides services in e-commerce, Artificial Intelligence, digital streaming, and cloud computing, that was founded by Jeff Bezos on July 5, 1994; in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, USA. Amazon started out as an online marketplace for books, before expanding its catalogue to video games, furniture, toys, electronics, jewelry, software, apparel, and food, later into web services.
Amazon became the world’s most valuable retailer in 2015; overtaking long-time holder Walmart for the first time. It also reached a market capitalization of 1 trillion dollars for the first time in January 2020.
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#8 Target
- Founded: 1962
- Headquarters: Target Plaza, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Need to Know
Target was founded by George Dayton and John Geisse in 1962. It began its retail services as a discount division of Dayton’s Company (parent company, renamed Target Corporation in 2000) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Currently the eighth largest retailer in the US with 1,926 stores (2021) and 409,000 (2020) employees in the US.
It suffered losses due to a well-publicized huge credit card information breach (2013), a permanent shutdown of its Canadian subsidiary (2015). Target has since bounced back by entering the urban markets, and was ranked no. 37 on Fortune 500 list of largest US corporations by total revenue in 2020.
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#9 Bed Bath & Beyond
- Founded: 1971
- Headquarters: Union, New Jersey, USA
Need to Know
Bed Bath & Beyond was founded by Warren Eisenberg and Leonard Feinstein in Springfield, New Jersey in 1971. The American retailer started as a specialty store – bath and bedroom furniture, equipment, and accessories – and is now into home decor, furniture, equipment, and accessories. Bed Bath & Beyond has over 1,460 stores (2020) in the United States of America, Canada (53), Mexico (4), and Puerto Rico. It has acquired about 6 different businesses and has about 55,000 employees(2020).
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#10 Crate & Barrel
- Founded: 1971
- Headquarters: Union, New Jersey, USA
Need to Know
Crate & Barrel is an American home decor – housewares, furniture, and related merchandise – a retail company that was founded by Gordon & Carole Segal in 1962. It was started in an elevator factory in Chicago, Illinois, US, by the couple after their honeymoon experience; cheap, affordable, durable European home decor pieces, and decided to sell these to Americans. The company has over 100 stores in the United Sates of America, Canada, Taiwan Philippines Mexico, Costa Rica, Peru, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates with about 7,500 employees.
It has 2 sister brands; Crate and Kids, home decor for kids; CB2, one for young adults and couples.