Ikea and Best Buy are the latest retailers that are combining forces to feature a store within a store after Kohl’s models success with Sephora.
Best Buy and Ikea are the latest two retailers to cozy up for a shop-in-shop concept. Best Buy recently announced that 10 of its stores will feature 1,000-square-foot Ikea footprints that display kitchen and laundry room settings starting in the fall.
The goal of the partnership is to help consumers see the complete context of the appliances they are buying and design their space with the displayed furniture.
Ikea employees will be present at Best Buy to help shoppers and order products. This is the first time Ikea is selling its products through another merchant, which will help both retailers “meet customer needs in a rapidly changing environment,” the companies said the announcement.
“By bringing together our home furnishing expertise, products and services with Best Buy’s leadership in appliances and technology, we’re creating a one-stop destination where customers can design their dream kitchen, storage solutions or laundry space with ease,” said Rob Olson, Chief Operation Officer at Ikea U.S.
The “one-stop shop experience,” like shopping at a mass merchant, is a common consumer habit during times of economic uncertainty and decline, said Brendan Witcher, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.
“Brands like Ikea and Best Buy coming together make sense: If either would start selling the other’s categories of products on their own, the assortments would likely be similar,” Witcher said. “But partnering to create shop-in-shop locations is a faster and more efficient way of getting to that same outcome.”
Retailers pilot shop-in-shop models
Other retailers have piloted this model including Sephora at Kohl’s stores, Ulta at Target stores and Toys R Us at Macy’s stores. Retailers are experimenting with what mash-ups they could create after the success of the Sephora and Kohl’s shop-in-shop, Witcher said.
“The industry has accepted that retail stores make strategic sense for the foreseeable future, so retailers have shifted from closing stores to finding ways to better utilize and monetize their stores’ footprints,” Witcher said.
Kohl’s, for example, said Sephora is bringing in a younger and more diverse shopper to the brand. CEO Tom Kingsbury told investors in May 2025 that all 1,100 Kohl’s stores now have a Sephora. For smaller Kohl’s stores, Sephora is a 750 square foot shop, and larger Kohl’s stores house a 2,500-square-foot Sephora.
“In Q1, Sephora delivered another quarter of positive sales with net sales up 6% and comparable sales up 1%,” said Jill Timm, Chief Financial Officer at Kohl’s in its fiscal Q1 2025 earnings call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.
The Ikea shops will debut in 10 shops this fall, five in Florida and five in Texas.