By Sophie Barth
Step into a big blue and yellow warehouse, where there''s only one path from the front door to the cash registers, hundreds of furniture pieces and accessories and a central restaurant featuring mostly Swedish dishes.
This Swedish home furnishing phenomenon, Ikea, has been expanding throughout the U.S. Last year, its sales totaled $2 billion in the states, according to the official North America At-a-Glance Ikea fact sheet.
Draper will be the home of its first Intermountain West location.
The closest outlets to Utah are currently in Tempe, Ariz., Seattle, and several California stores. The Draper location is predicted to open in spring 2007.
Ikea was started in Sweden 'to create a better everyday life for the many,' according to its corporate mission statement.
'Our goal is to offer a wide range of home furnishing with good design and good function at a price that the many can afford,' said Joseph Roth, director of public affairs for IKEA in North America.
The Draper Ikea will cover 310,000 square feet, Roth said. Its layout, like other Ikea stores, will display furniture and home accessories in individual room settings, illustrating how shoppers can combine pieces to create themed or matched rooms.
'My mom and I love to go shopping there,' said Alyse Almond, a senior from Kirkland, Wash., majoring in history teaching . 'I like it because prices are reasonable for what you want, and when you walk through, the rooms are set up already. I like to walk through and get ideas.'
Almond''s home in Washington is 45 minutes away from the Washington Ikea. It''s a much farther distance from Provo.
'I found out about Ikea after I came home from my mission and saw the big blue and spacious building off the freeway,' said Shawn Saunders, a junior from Mesa, Ariz., majoring in business management. 'We furnished an entire townhouse here with Ikea. We had to pack it all up in a U-haul and drive it up.'
One aspect that made Draper attractive to Ikea executives was the presence of current Ikea customers who travel to shop at the different locations, Roth said.
'As we started looking where to build in the west, Salt Lake City stood out to us as a place where we already had a customer base,' Roth said. 'It''s fast growing, and it seemed like a great fit for us as we move further inland from the coast.'
Draper was chosen specifically for its visibility from the interstate, and its professional, progressive and smart growth, Roth said. The central location between Provo and Ogden was also a draw.
Saunders''s favorite Ikea pieces are his metallic knife strips that hang on the walls of his kitchen. Almond likes her metal placemat that she hung on the wall as a magnet strip.
'You can always tell where people are from, because if they''re by an Ikea, they''ll have all Ikea stuff,' Almond said.
The new Ikea will be hiring about 350 employees.