[cpwright]

The stores are franchises, so it makes sense that they won't ship it from store to store. I can even sort of see why they might not want to ship a single item to a store; given that they might want to batch these things up and skip the middle step of a distribution center.

I think they should probably at least try to figure out site-to-store or equivalent if they want to expand their online presence (maybe there isn't enough profit in it if they have to put up with distribution inefficiencies).

[bjourne]

Technically franchises. Only a minority of stores have external owners and most of them are owned by the Ikea corporation.

[calgoo]

Exactly... The main stores, (yellow and blue buildings) are the normal ones which are owned and operated by IKEA Corp.