IKEA Interested in Former Best Buy Employees
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IKEA Interested in Former Best Buy Employees

Photo by:   tianya1223, Pixabay
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Sofía Hanna By Sofía Hanna | Journalist and Industry Analyst - Tue, 01/19/2021 - 10:47

IKEA, a store dedicated to the production and distribution of packaged furniture, recently announced that it is interested in employing former Best Buy staff after the electronics store closed its operations in Mexico on Dec. 31, 2020.

When Best Buy shut down its stores in Mexico, the company made it very clear that its staff had nothing to do with the closure. "Despite [our team's] extraordinary work, the effects of the pandemic have been too strong and it is not viable for us to keep our business in Mexico," President of Best Buy Mexico Fernando Silva said in an official release, as reported by MBN.

Luckily, IKEA has shown interest in the former Best Buy employees. "We are supporting Best Buy and its workers to find a job opportunity through virtual fairs, following our job creation campaign given our opening at Encuentro Oceanía," said Malcolm Pruys during an interview with Forbes. Best Buy thanked IKEA via Twitter for supporting its former collaborators and for opening their doors to them.

IKEA’s decision to chase after Best Buy's talent was similar to the one taken by Steren, another retailer focused on electronics and technology. When Best Buy announced it was shutting down its operations, Steren reached out to the employees to incorporate them to its workforce, according to Forbes.

IKEA arrived in Mexico with an initial plan of opening its first store in Mexico City's Oceania Mall in October 2020. However, given the current sanitary and economic conditions, the opening was delayed to February 2021. IKEA’s website, however, is already up and running and demand for its products exceeded expectations by 1,000 percent, creating good expectations for the brand and its products, as previously reported by MBN. "Since 2019, when we announced that we were arriving in Mexico, we have been working as a team to follow this dream. We made this a reality in October with our online store but we continue working on our greatest goal: having our first store in Mexico," said Annie Chandler, IKEA Store Manager in Mexico, in a Milenio article.

Mexico has welcomed IKEA with open arms, both in terms of demand and in embracing the economic benefits the store will bring to the community. "It (IKEA) is going to detonate the economy of this whole area. This is an area without a single mall; (Encuentro Oceanía) is going to be the first. This anchor store is going to be very beneficial. We celebrate this in these difficult times. We have to be very aware of the economic reactivation opportunity this represents," Julio Cesar Moreno Rivera, Mayor of Venustiano Carranza, mentioned in a Milenio article.

Photo by:   tianya1223, Pixabay

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