The IKEA furniture store at Sint-Denijs-Westrem, near Gent (East Flanders) is among the top 5 most successful IKEA stores worldwide when it comes to turnover. Figures released on Monday show that excluding the restaurant, only 4 other IKEA stores have a higher turnover that the store near Ghent.
These are the stores in the Irish capital Dublin, Delft in the Netherlands, Montréal in Canada and Wembley in Northwest London. The figure is for the 2024 financial year and relates to turnover. The financial year ran from 1 September 2023 to 31 August 2024. IKEA has 400 stores in 31 countries.
IKEA’s spokeswoman Lotte De Wilde “In any case business is brisk at all the Belgian IKEA stores, but the one in Ghent is doing particularly well”. Lotte De Wilde added that this is possibly because the store attracts customers from both East and West Flanders, a province where there is no IKEA.
Furthermore, the Ghent store is one of the furnituire chain's larger shops. In some other cities there is more than one store, while in Ghent there is only one.
40 years in Belgium
The first Ikea stores opened in Belgium 40 years ago at Zaventem and Ternat (both Flemish Brabant). The Ghent store open in 2008. Its Belgian stores had a total turnover of 1.198 billion euro during the last financial year.