IKEA Philippines in final stages of finalizing partnerships for online deliveries, home installations

Home furnishing retailer IKEA Philippines is now in the final stage of finalizing its partnership with firms for its logistics network, as the company seeks to offer products through its e-commerce platform by the third quarter of 2021.

The online platform is set to start operations some nine weeks before the opening of its first physical store in the Philippines located in Pasay City, which will be the brand's biggest store across the globe, also scheduled to open in the July to September period.

"As soon as we are ready to start our commercial approach to the market, we can start to give access to the Filipinos at least online, so the people will be able to order online. They will have access to an online catalog to see our products and order, and get them delivered even before we open our (physical) store," Georg Platzer, market development manager and store manager at IKEA Philippines, said in a virtual interview.

"I think we are in the final stage of building a good logistic network in the Philippines. This has already started three years ago. Three years ago we started to find logistic partners," he added.

Platzer said there will be different partnerships for the home delivery, parcel, and home installation services which will be outsourced moving forward, but did not identify the parties.

"It has to happen soon if we really want to get started in quarter three, as I said before, and also these companies need to secure that they have the right competencies onboard. They might even have to invest in equipment or even in cars, trucks, and so on, that's why this is going to happen now," he explained.

The online shop will be rolled out in four waves — the first covering Metro Manila, and then expanding to the Greater Manila Area, then to Luzon, and then to the rest of the country.

"For us, it is the biggest challenge that we want to do this in a sustainable way and in an affordable way right, so it should not be too expensive, so we need to find a way that we can do these deliveries in an efficient and effective way," said Platzer.

"That is going to take a little bit of time and this needs to be developed together with our partners, but we have started to talk about it already a while ago, and that's the idea," he added.

In terms of the store in Pasay City where the company is leasing out a 65,000 square meter area in the Mall of Asia Complex, Platzer expressed optimism that the timeframes are still on track to be met.

"We aim to open our doors in quarter three 2021, this is the plan. We are on a good way to achieve this, but this is still not yet finally confirmed. It's a fantastic project but it's big, it requires a lot of hard work to deliver according to our timeline," Platzer said.

"We know that all our partners are working very hard to deliver whatever needs to be delivered. And for now, the plan is to start on quarter three and we really hope that this is going to happen," he elaborated.—AOL, GMA News