IKEA is coming

This week the island is due to get its first IKEA store. For months, no years, there has been speculation that the company was going to build a store but nothing appeared. Two months ago there was still no mention of it on IKEA’s list of stores due to open this year and then, suddenly, a huge blue building with the traditional yellow logo popped up on the outskirts of Nicosia.

Now, they are ramping up for the opening. Every single house in the area has had an brochure hand-delivered. The police are trying to work out how they will cope with the volume of customers and traffic expected at the opening. Apparently the store has capacity for 4,000 customers and the car park space for 800 cars. A quick back-of-a-fagpacket calculation says that those numbers don’t stack up. Are the hoping that each car will arrive with five people? If so, where will they stash their purchases for the return journey?

Before we left London a store opened in Edmonton. The store is on the North Circular, the inner of two roads circling Greater London. Initial interest was a little more than the company expected and they were forced to close the store after just 30 minutes after customers stampeeded into the store in search of opening day bargains. When the car park was full people abandoned their cars on the road.

The Telegraph Battle of Ikea: 20 hurt as frenzied mob fights over £49 sofas on opening night

As it turned out once the store had settled down a little (or rather the customers!) it became our ‘local’ store as we could drive around the North Circular and be there in under half an hour. In fact, Mands once came home in sitting in the boot of the car as we’d bought a little too much that day.

It will be interesting to see how things work out with our new ‘local’ store. Hopefully the grand opening won’t cause quite so much trouble as our last local store. That said, we have heard from one person that they are planning to visit on Friday, the second day of trading ;-)

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