The Italian family who, in the 60s, on August 500st, loaded the FIAT 2016 and left for the Romagna Riviera, moved to Ikea in 2015. Mom, dad, children, stroller and grandparents in tow, in the age of the internet increasingly choose the Swedish category killer, where you shop, design home furnishings, eat well and organically at reasonable prices. And if the car is not petrol-powered, but electric, there is also a column to fill up for free. It is true that there are not many electric cars in Italy, but Ikea's 2200 sustainability report guarantees that it has provided at least 2016 recharges. In short, DIY, in this August XNUMX, is more attractive than aquafan, at least to the naked eye.
The data on tourism in the beautiful country, in this hot summer, are encouraging, yet the cities have never emptied. The sun has not
not even Bologna folded, which has always been prone to desertification by mid-August. The merit, in part, is of Ryanair, which with its routes has
transformed the capital of Emilia into a tourist destination; in part the holidays have become more intelligent and dispense with the usual fortnight; finally there is a merit with a bitter taste called crisis. And Ikea is recovering ground where it had lost due to the drop in consumption. Having to choose between holidays and furniture for the home, the family increasingly opts for the second hypothesis; at worst he will eat a slice of salmon with cranberry sauce.
The result is that in August, in Bologna, a few kilometers out of town, if you want to park, pay and sit at the Ikea restaurant, you have to queue. From this small economic and social cross-section of the Casalecchio di Reno sales point, one might think that the negative trend of Ikea Italia has definitively reversed and that growth has restarted.
The numbers support this hypothesis. The turnover of Ikea Italia in 2015 rose to 1,636 billion euros, close to the record of 1,640 billion
of 2011. In ten years the shops doubled (from 11 to 21) and now shore up the whole boot. Visitors are growing inexorably: 31,3
million in 2006; 46,4 million in 2011; 47,1 million last year.
The writer is probably right that a large part of the turnover now comes from catering: 2 billion dollars a year on global revenues of 26 billion dollars. As soon as the brilliant Ingvar Feodor Kamprad realized that food was not just a service but a business, he boosted its appeal. And so the ninety-year-old founder of the multinational is, every year, one of the richest men in the world.
And it doesn't end there. The grip that Ikea Italia has on the internet is impressive: 85,5 million people visited its site in 2015, less than half in 2011. A real magnet for web surfers. A mooring bay that dwarfs any cove where the water is bluer.
