It has been compared to the return of the National Hockey League and touted as a surefire sign that Winnipeg has returned to the upper echelon of Canadian cities – IKEA is coming to town.

The Sweden-based iconic furniture manufacturer is in the final stages of building a massive, 395,000-square-foot store, which will be its third-largest outlet in Canada when it opens in late November or early December.

The arrival of a new retailer in town isn’t usually cause for massive celebration, but this time it’s different. Winnipeggers went bananas when companies such as Old Navy, Forever 21 and Sephora decided the city was big enough to support their businesses. Even a revamped store by the Hudson Bay Co. a few years ago prompted shoppers to line up around the block prior to its grand opening.

But none of these players can hold a Grono table lamp to the undying loyalty that IKEA elicits from its customers/fans. Winnipeg has long been one of IKEA’s top markets for its catalogue’s sales, and the company’s research shows it’s very common for Winnipeggers to make the trek to Minneapolis or Calgary to get their hands on a Billy bookcase.

Indeed, Winnipeg has been on the company’s radar screen for years, according to Madeleine Löwenborg-Frick, public relations manager for IKEA Canada. When the Winnipeg store finally opens in late November or early December, it’s going to be, quite simply, a madhouse.

The City of Winnipeg and the province anticipated this when the announcement of the new store’s location was made a couple of years ago and have since spent millions of dollars on new roadways to facilitate traffic flow at the Seasons of Tuxedo shopping complex in southwest Winnipeg.

But is it all much ado about assemble-yourself furniture? Don’t think so.

R.M. Chipman, patriarch of the family that brought the Winnipeg Jets back to town in the spring of 2011, can’t say enough about the importance of the furniture-makers’ arrival: “I’ve always said Winnipeg needed two things to return to its place as one of major cities in Canada – an NHL franchise and an IKEA.”

But people don’t just want to shop at IKEA; they want to work there, too. Since the announcement in early July that the store planned to hire between 300 and 350 people to work on the shop floor and behind cashiers, as well as on its IT, logistics, interior design, graphics and restaurant teams, online applications have been pouring in – more than 3,000 in the first month alone.

This kind of news has John McCallum, a finance professor at the I.H. Asper School of Business at the University of Manitoba, dusting off his pompoms. “Winnipeggers should cheer [at announcements such as this],” he says. “IKEA is going to be a real boost to the city.”

The fact that some IKEA positions are going to be on the low end of the salary scale doesn’t concern McCallum: “Any job is a good job. But, for the security and benefits, full-time jobs beat part-time jobs by a lot. The path for anybody begins with a job that begins somewhere.”IE

© 2012 Investment Executive. All rights reserved.