Best Buy opens Ikea consultation spaces, showing retail's service shift

Best Buy’s new consultation spaces inside Ikea stores in Frisco, Texas, and Tampa, Florida, push retail one step further: the sale starts in the aisle and ends with delivery, installation and setup help. In those spaces, Best Buy employees help shoppers think through appliance and technology choices while they are already planning kitchen or laundry-room projects at Ikea, then place the order and coordinate the rest without sending the customer to another store.

The move reverses the usual direction of the partnership. Best Buy and IKEA U.S. first announced the collaboration on July 31, 2025, calling it the first-ever cross-brand retail experience for IKEA U.S. The pilot covered 10 stores across Florida and Texas, with 1,000-square-foot Ikea footprints built around kitchen and laundry room settings. When the experience opened on November 5, 2025, the lineup included Boynton Beach, Lakeland, Melbourne, Waterford Lakes and Daytona Beach in Florida, plus Alamo Ranch, Mesquite, Hulen, South Austin and Humble in Texas. Best Buy said Lakeland and Alamo Ranch would also serve as Ikea pickup points for most products.

Ikea said the arrangement made its products and services accessible through another U.S. retailer for the first time. Best Buy said the experience would be guided by Ikea co-workers and its own Blue Shirts, a reminder that the labor model matters as much as the floor plan. Patrick McGinnis framed the partnership around how products fit into everyday life, while Javier Quiñones said it was meant to make design, functionality and affordability easier to reach.

For Big Lots, the lesson is less about branding than about the daily job on the floor. Big Lots said in its 2024 annual report that it operated 1,392 stores and an e-commerce platform as of February 3, 2024. It also offers lease-to-own through Progressive Leasing in categories that include furniture, mattresses, appliances and electronics. Those are not quick-scan purchases. They are the kinds of transactions where an associate has to ask the right questions: What room is this for? How soon do you need it delivered? Will it fit through the doorway? Do you need assembly, installation or a payment plan?

That consultative skill has become even more important as Big Lots has been forced to shrink and reset. The company and its subsidiaries entered voluntary Chapter 11 proceedings on September 9, 2024, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, and Variety Wholesalers later said it acquired 219 Big Lots stores out of bankruptcy. In that kind of environment, every store visit has to work harder. The Best Buy-Ikea model shows why: in home retail, the associate who can explain the total cost, the delivery timing and the fit in the room is not just ringing up a sale. That associate is becoming the reason the sale happens at all.