Ikea’s new store is in the metaverse.
The company announced Wednesday it’s piloting a limited-edition pop-up in Roblox’s Welcome to Bloxburg game offering players Ikea products they can use to decorate virtual homes. This is the first time that the Swedish furniture retailer has entered gaming in a meaningful way, since an earlier Roblox game in 2024, according to the company. It comes after noticing for years how young adults and teens were building and designing homes in games and wondering why Ikea wasn’t a part of it.
“Ikea wanted to better understand how Gen Z and Gen Alpha think about furnishing and self-expression, recognizing the need to meet them on platforms they already use and learn from how they interact with products and spaces in a digital environment,” Ikea’s chief digital officer Parag Parekh tells Fast Company.
“At Ikea we are always curious and eager to develop and connect with people where they are. Today many people are online, and many people are gaming,” he says. “This is an area where we want to see if there is an appetite for Ikea as a brand and our products also in the gaming world.”
Ikea’s goal: better understand Gen Z and Gen Alpha
The pilot is intentionally small, as its primary goal is to gather learnings for the company. For now it will be available only for people in Australia and Sweden from January 22 to February 5. Located inside the virtual Bloxburg Fancy Furniture Store, which players can access in the the game’s town center, people can choose from items like the Stockholm sofa, the Brännboll inflatable gaming chair, and Ikea’s stuffed toy shark named Blåhaj.
The company says it chose its selection of products based on items that are less common in the game, are classic Ikea designs, or are items that the Bloxburg team suggested players might like.
“Overall, the aim is less about ‘selling’ a catalog and more about understanding how customers express home furnishing ideas and how Ikea products can support that in a digital world,” Parekh says.
Unboxing Ikea’s tech moves
Ikea’s entry into gaming comes on the heels of other tech-forward moves. Last year the company relaunched its smart home line and opened branded kiosks selling Ikea products in select U.S. Best Buy locations. But it’s also late to the metaverse party.
Brands including Gucci, Nike, and Walmart opened their own Roblox experiences in 2022—but the trend never caught on in a big way. Today, the dream of a widely used virtual metaverse has been declared effectively dead, and Meta laid off hundreds in its own virtual reality division Tuesday. There are signs of a possible resurgence, though, with examples like Ikea’s foray into the space and Coach’s collection on Sims 4 this week proving brands aren’t abandoning virtual worlds as spaces to show off their products completely.
For Ikea, the challenge in translating its physical home furnishings for a virtual world was balancing recognizability and simplicity, since items needed to feel instantly like they had Ikea proportions, colors, and silhouettes while also working smoothly in a gaming context. Luckily, Ikea already has all its products created in 3D, and Bloxburg modified those same models with Ikea’s approval to turn them into gamified objects.
“We are very pleased with the outcome,” Parkekh says.
There will also an in-person component for Ikea’s Roblox experience, with hidden QR codes set to go up at Ikea locations in the two pilot countries that visitors can scan to unlock extra items. And an Ikea in the metaverse could one day come to other countries too. The company says its virtual shop pilot is a just starting point, and it believes we’ll see more of its home furnishings in games going forward.