Word: ikea
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...repeat Britain's mistakes. They look instead at Sweden. It became the first European nation to split its track operations from passenger and freight services in the late 1980s, and has seen an upturn in rail traffic and a growing number of private rail operators. They include IKEA, the big furniture company, which has set up its own rail operations between Sweden and its biggest market, Germany. But elsewhere, the official reaction to liberalization is far more skeptical. No private operators have yet been granted licenses in France or Spain, even though both nations have implemented legislation that should technically...
...wire, it's solid, and it would be extraordinarily confusing if it weren't presented in an organized way," says chairman Garrett Boone. His solution: a U-shape layout that "allows people to pass all the departments in the store, both on the sides and in the center." Ikea, based in Helsingborg, Sweden, directs shoppers around its vast showrooms on preset paths but also allows them to circumvent the traffic pattern with strategically placed "cut-throughs." Customers like them because they provide not only increased mobility but also a clandestine, blows-against-the-empire kind of thrill...
There are lives being lived in the meticulously designed room settings at Ikea, even if they're fictional lives. "The settings that we do are all written to a brief that describes who lives there and what function the space has to perform for them," says Clive Cashman, the chain's U.S. public-affairs manager. A space designed for a young woman in a small apartment might feature a gate-leg table and chairs that can be hung on the wall; for a single parent, the store will show toy storage that is accessible to kids but can be easily...
...checkout, which is their last best chance to make a good impression. "If you're going to mess up the store experience, don't mess it up at the checkout," says Delhagen. A good checkout hinges on preventing a wait that can sour a shopper's whole day. Ikea, which doubled its number of checkout stands when it recently moved a store from King of Prussia, Pa., to bigger quarters in nearby Conshohocken, is looking even further ahead to a roving pre-checkout system, using wireless technology for mobile cashiers. Home Depot, based in Atlanta, recently invested heavily in self...
...fake trees, the mall has 220 stores, 30 restaurants, a 15-screen movie theater and a 3,716-sq-m go-cart track. Nestled amid grassy hills, office parks and apartment blocks in a massive ring of suburban sprawl 24 km southwest of Madrid - joining the big-box Ikea and Media Markt that already line the highway - Xanadú is the largest shopping mall in Spain and the sixth largest in Europe. So far, Xanadú is drawing crowds of the curious, suburbanites and thrill-seeking kids. When it opened on a holiday weekend earlier this month, 250,000 visited...