Preview: Big Boutique

Assembled furniture enthusiasts, rejoice: As of Feb. 8, the shiny new home of Burbank’s Ikea is officially open for business. Though the store moved less than a mile from its original location in downtown Burbank, it’s nearly twice as big – the largest in the nation, in fact, at 456,000 square feet. The interior boasts all the trappings one might expect at a super-Ikea: A playground equipped with a child-sized Swedish farmhouse, a 600-seat restaurant featuring three varieties of meatballs and a showroom that displays every item from Ikea’s furniture collections. “We had a limited product offering at the old store,” Roth said. “Now, all of our inventory is here on site,” said Joseph Roth, head of expansion affairs at Ikea North America. Read the full story in the Feb. 20 issue of the San Fernando Valley Business Journal.