Valencia's new Ikea opens next week
Wednesday, June 11, 2014 @ 1:16 PM
SWEDISH furniture giant Ikea will finally open in just one week on the newly-built Parc Alfafar industrial estate in the town of the same name in the outskirts of Valencia.
Fans of the eclectic mixed bag of funky, cut-price flat-pack home goods have been waiting for this moment for many years - residents in the Comunidad Valenciana have always had to travel to Murcia or even Madrid to kit out their houses at the Scandinavian chain.
And 400 new members of staff had been taken on - just a fraction, however, out of more than 30,000 who jammed Ikea's server within hours of its advertising a recruitment drive.
A further 40 are waiting in the wings to cover Sunday opening if the store eventually decides to do so.
Ikea says it is ready to follow through with this if need be, because it 'needs to offer the best possible customer service' and adds that in the Madrid store, Sunday is the second-most profitable day of the week in terms of takings.
At present, Ikea is up against a refusal from Alfafar town council, which says Sunday opening would take business away from local family-run furniture stores that do not open on a Sunday anyway, and will have to make the most of the 10 local, national and regional bank holidays it has been allowed to trade on.
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