7 New Details About Ikea Fishers

The opening date could be set in July. Ikea can’t finish its timeline until the building construction is done, and that’s hard to pinpoint. It’s not like assembling a Billy bookcase. They’re building us a 290,000-square-foot retail promise land. Once the contractor turns the building over to Ikea, the company can then nail down an opening date. According to spokesman Joseph Roth, the company could hone in on that day in mid-July, but construction delays could push the announcement back to August. The opening probably will not happen before mid- to late-September. Reports that the doors could open soon after Labor Day are a little too optimistic, Roth says.
Die-hard fans treat the grand opening like a rock concert. People can start lining up two days before the opening. Yes, this will actually happen—most likely because there is always an incentive, like a giveaway for the first x-number of shoppers. Ikea has received so much “enthusiasm” for this tradition that it has limited how many giveaways a person can win.
The 250 jobs will be hard to fill. Store manager Holly Davidson (a native of Mitchell, Indiana, incidentally) says low unemployment makes the job of filling the customer service and sales spots more difficult than you might imagine. Ikea’s minimum wage is higher than the national one, and most jobs start above Ikea’s minimum wage, Roth says.
Every store has the same merchandise. There’s no such thing as an A-level and B-level Ikea store. Roth says every Ikea (except the odd small location, the closest being Pittsburgh) has the same merchandise. Even though the West Chester, Ohio, store is 50,000 square feet larger than the Fishers store and two floors as opposed to one, the product selection will be the same. Roth explains that most of West Chester’s extra square footage is chewed up by stairwells, elevators, and an escalator, which our store won’t need.
There’s no shopping-cart escalator. Because the Fishers store is one level, there’s no need for the Vermaport shopping cart conveyor that so many of us have used at the store in Schaumburg, Illinois.

The layout will remind you of Kessler Boulevard. Just as the major artery snakes its way across town, going in each direction at some point, so too will the path through Ikea noodle hither and yon. There’s only one entrance (the restaurant’s separate entrance will be open only for 30 minutes each morning, for breakfast service before the store opens). Shoppers will enter the furniture showroom first, then the restaurant, then the “marketplace” area of accessories and textiles, and finally the self-serve or “picking” area, where the assembly-required items are found. Shortcuts, though, will be marked. We’ll all learn them eventually so we can beeline for the houseplants.
The “as-is” section is right up front. Technically, Ikea’s scratch-and-dent area sits at the end of the layout described above, but that route winds up near the entrance. It shouldn’t be hard to navigate directly to the as-is area. Devotees will find a way.