The Swedish retail giant IKEA has announced its newest product line: coworking space. Last week, IKEA and Ingka Centres, a subsidiary of IKEA’s property division Ingka Group (formerly Ikea Centres), released plans to partner with Industrious, a New York–based company that leases private offices and coworking space, to build a new coworking location in San Francisco just south of Union Square at 945 Market Street.
Hej! Workshops is a joint collaboration between IKEA and Ingka Centres, which owns and leases space to 381 IKEA stores worldwide. The new 46,470 square foot location on the third floor of IKEA’s 250,000 square foot existing Market Street location will function as both a coworking space and as an IKEA furniture showroom. The new Market Street destination is the second coworking space IKEA operates; its first brick-and-mortar coworking location opened in Stockholm in June 2022.
“With a focus on creating a vibrant community built on shared experiences, the coworking space offers members a variety of collaborative environments and dedicated areas for focused work all designed to foster organic interactions among colleagues,” a press release stated, which notes IKEA for Business was paramount to the spatial design. “Members will also have an opportunity to personalize their workplace so that it feels like a true home for their business. Industrious will operate the location and incorporate it into its global workplace platform, which includes over 160 locations across 65 markets.”
Despite a steep decline in demand for office space since Covid-19, there’s been a steady uptick this summer in San Fransisco thanks to the city’s growing AI industry. As such, Hej! Workshop and Industrious officials are confident their concept will flourish in San Francisco. “We’ve been wanting to expand in San Francisco, and this was the market that Ikea picked, so it was a perfect fit,” Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari told Commercial Observer. “In this day and age if you want sleek and sexy, you’ve got lots of options. But, if you’re going to leave the house, going somewhere bright and fun might be the recipe a lot of people, and a lot of companies, are looking for,” Hodari continued.
The announcement follows a pivot in IKEA’s investment strategy. In 2017, IKEA sold off 25 of its retail parks throughout Europe for almost $1 billion to redirect spending on city center locations. A year later, IKEA poured $6.6 billion into building new locations in city centers around the world, with a big focus on Indian and Chinese markets. Despite the market shift from physical storefronts to online shopping, IKEA has since opened fifteen locations in city centers worldwide since 2018.
IKEA’s expansion into the $26 billion coworking industry marks its latest addition to an already robust real estate portfolio. Heyj! Workshop’s new Market Street location is set to open in early 2024.
