Photo courtesy of IKEA
August 5, 2025
Do IKEA Shops Work Inside Best Buy?
Best Buy this fall plans to pilot IKEA mini-showrooms showcasing “inspirational kitchen and laundry room settings.”
The in-store shops, launching in 10 stores throughout Florida and Texas, will span 1,000 square feet and offer products from both retailers (sorry, no IKEA Swedish meatballs). IKEA associates will be available to plan and order home furnishing solutions, with Best Buy employees on hand to provide advice on electronics.
Best Buy’s stores also feature similar in-store shops from a number of electronics brands, including Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung, but this represents its first such home furnishings partnership.
“When you’re shopping for new electronics, whether it’s a laptop or a TV or a washing machine, it’s important to understand the technology and make a decision based on how it will help you, your family and your home in your everyday life,” said Patrick McGinnis, chief merchandising officer at Best Buy. “With this partnership, we get to combine technology and design and show shoppers what’s truly possible in their home like never before.”
The partnership will represent the first time IKEA products and services will be accessible through another U.S. retailer.
“By bringing together our home furnishing expertise, products, and services with Best Buy’s leadership in appliances and technology, we’re creating a one-stop destination where customers can design their dream kitchen, storage solutions or laundry space with ease,” added Rob Olson, chief operation officer, IKEA U.S. “It’s a great step on our journey to helping people create beautiful, functional homes at a price they can afford.”
IKEA Expanding its Retail Footprint With Smaller Stores, Shop-in-Shop Offerings
The Swedish retailer has been opening a number of smaller stores to be more accessible to consumers versus its massive warehouses located on major city outskirts.
These include 17 “Plan & Order Point” showrooms, at generally less than 5,000 square feet, offering consultations for kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom projects while serving as pickup points. IKEA also has three smaller city locations in California in Arcadia, San Francisco, and San Marcos, ranging from 11,000 to 52,000 square feet.
The Best Buy partnership also comes as IKEA has been aggressively reducing prices as high interest rates, inflation, and a slowing housing market have impacted demand for furniture and decor.
For Best Buy, the partnership could spark foot traffic and provides more credibility in the home area, with the retailer already a major seller of appliances. Appliances — ranging from dishwashers, laundry, ovens, and refrigerators to blenders, coffee makers, and vacuums — made up 12% of Best Buy’s sales last year. The appliance category, however, has recently been a laggard for Best Buy due to weak demand for large appliances, with same-stores sales tumbling 15% in both 2023 and 2024.
Discussion Questions
Would an IKEA in-store shop inside Best Buy entice or confuse shoppers?
Is the partnership likely more beneficial to Best Buy or IKEA?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Lucille DeHart
Principal, MKT Marketing Services/Columbus Consulting
Carlos Arámbula
Principal, Growth Genie Partners
Kai Clarke
CEO, President- American Retail Consultants
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Whether this succeeds remains to be seen. However, it’s important to understand what success looks like for each party.
For IKEA, the aim is to enhance brand visibility and improve accessibility, particularly by using some of the shop-in-shop locations as pickup points. IKEA is a is phenomenal business, but its physical reach in the US is limited. This initiative forms part of a broader strategy to expand its footprint and grow market share.
For Best Buy, the move is more of a necessity than an opportunity. Best Buy is under pressure to reinvigorate its stores and make them relevant. An IKEA shop-in-shop adds some novelty and may generate very modest foot traffic, but it doesn’t address the deeper challenges facing the core electronics category.
Only the partners in this can tell us if it’s working – clearly it’s an ad more than a real store… is there enough in that small space to intrigue people? – but I’m skeptical: IKEA’s products don’t really strike me as so overwhelming that a small sample of them would be of much interest. Honestly I think they may have it backwards: a BestBuy spot in an IKEA would make more sense to me.
The Best Buy shop-in-shops are only to showcase the kitchen/laundry range. IKEA massively under indexes on fitted kitchens (despite their offer being really good value), so the aim is to drive awareness. This is also why they’re opening up more small stand alone plan and order points in select locations across the US. I think a Best Buy in an IKEA is a great idea for appliances linked to fitted kitchens. But IKEA does have its own range of appliances and prefers to sell its own products so not sure this would fly.
Interesting. I was thinking more along the lines of consumer electronics than appliances tho: I could see someone shopping for a kitchen upgrade getting sidetracked by a Hi-def TV than the other way around. (and good to see you back in the top spot..for a few days I was worried Speedy Saunders might become NoShow Neil 🙂 )
Ha! I was in the Netherlands and the UK this past week, so the time zones were not as convenient for commenting!
This one sure looks like the biggest mismatch of brands since Halston showed up at JCPenney four decades ago. Ikea and Best Buy have different customer bases, different ways to interface with consumers and very little in common. In fact, a Best Buy shop inside of an Ikea would have made much more sense. If you want to see how this looks I suggest you go soon. I don’t think it’s going to be there very long.
IKEA and Best Buy are both well-established retail brands, and I don’t believe their collaboration will confuse core consumers.
I think it’s a smart opportunity for consumers to learn how to optimize space and storage with new appliances. This could lead to increased engagement, higher transaction values, and additional sales.
Overall, it’s a mutually beneficial partnership—with a slight advantage for Best Buy, as they will benefit from the in-store displays and co-merchandising support they currently need.
There’s clear potential as well as execution risks here, especially around brand dilution and confusion. However, the hidden value engine here is a data fusion opportunity combined with an appropriate success metrics framework. Best Buy sits on rich behavioral signals: appliance replacement cycles, smart home adoption patterns, and crucially—the timing of major purchases that signal life transitions (new home, renovation, family changes). IKEA brings spatial intelligence, including room configurations, storage needs, and design preferences, which predict future furniture requirements.
When executed and connected properly, the combination can create predictive models that neither could produce independently. KPIs focused on customer journey progression rate, cross-brand lifetime value, and consultation-to-completion conversion are additional novel and relevant success measures.
The IKEA shop-in-shops within Best Buy seem well thought out. From a category standpoint, IKEA focusing on kitchen outfitting is a natural (and non-competitive) fit with Best Buy’s appliance offering. IKEA is learning a lot about showroom formats through its Plan & Order Point concept, so nothing prevents the brand from expanding into more categories if the partnership gains traction (and without eating up more space). IKEA is as invested in expanding its reach as Best Buy is in maintaining its relevance. This one makes sense.
While the collaboration could attract customers looking for a one-stop shopping experience, it might also create confusion due to the distinct brand identities and shopping experiences each store offers. Shoppers might find it challenging to navigate the combined layout or understand the product offerings clearly. Additionally, differences in customer service approaches and return policies could present further complications for consumers.
I really like this partnership. One of my favorite things IKEA does are the sample rooms it puts together, especially the tiny footprints that optimize space. Add Best Buy’s goods and you have an instant working model customers can follow.
This is a very confusing partnership. What does a BB shopper offer an Ikea perspective? Ikea offers flat ship furniture with a Euro spin. How do these 2 things intersect where they can share a common strength?
The first thing I thought about when i saw the title of the article was that IKEA needs a lot of space. This could be a good strategy for visibility and keeping the name/brand front-of-mind, but IKEA’s customers are accustomed to huge stores; I doubt that 1,000 square feet is enough. That said, the management at IKEA and Best Buy are smart people.
I am not sharing this vision. While I applaud brand synergy, I don’t see the correlation between kitchen and laundry with sound systems and technology. Office and den/living space pop up showrooms could be interesting. Ikea would be better served creating their own mini showrooms, downsizing their current locations and catering to niche living spaces, like just college spaces, just kitchen/bath, etc. This would create more destination shoppers with intent to purchase based on life need. Separate baby showrooms could also finally creep into the lost Buy Buy Baby stores.
Discovery. Physical stores are the headquarters for discovery. And brand collaborations can in effect expand the Brand Promise for both parties. There will of course be challenges in the nuances of the execution, but I find this to be a highly worthwhile experiment. Best Buy gets additional foot traffic and IKEA gets more proximity to more customers in more markets. How each of the brands are able to leverage this incremental traffic and exposure will indeed be the challenge.
I don’t believe the shop-in-shop will confuse people. The question is, what mindset is the Best Buy shopper in? Could this s-i-s trigger a shopper of appliances to rethink their kitchen/laundry or storage needs, maybe. But at what cost for IKEA and Best Buy. Would a shopper think a s-i-s at Best Buy would have the breadth of examples in order to make a proper decision or would they want to visit IKEA instead? In that case, could a smaller display at Best Buy have triggered the same behavior? Let’s see where this is in a year.
Consumers are drawn to ideas, inspiration, and guidance, and this partnership delivers. Pairing IKEA’s design with Best Buy’s tech know-how is a smart move that creates context by bringing furniture and technology together in real-life spaces. It’s an experiential way for shoppers to see how these products function as part of a complete solution.