Ikea tech buy boosts its online defenses
TaskRabbit acquired as rival Amazon looms
Furniture giant Ikea’s decision to buy the popular on-demand service TaskRabbit may seem like a natural move: Ikea sells furniture that needs to be built, and TaskRabbit offers the people to do it.
But analysts say this deal, which was confirmed by the companies Thursday, tells a deeper story about what retailers need to do to survive as more people shop online.
“Ikea’s reasons for purchasing TaskRabbit may go well beyond the gains of having that company in-house for purposes of delivery and assembly,” said Ryan Calo, an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law, who has written about the sharing economy.
“You never know what these new marriages with tech companies are going to yield,” he added.
San Francisco’s TaskRabbit, which allows users to pay for other people to do tasks like
building furniture or standing in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, is one of the best-known startups in the “gig” economy, in which companies connect independent workers to jobs.
It already had a partnership with Ikea, which is Swedish, to offer furniture assembly to its customers in Britain. But this deal, which is expected to close next month, will give Ikea total ownership. In a statement, Ikea CEO Jesper Brodin said it will help make customers’ lives “a little bit easier.”
“We will be able to learn from TaskRabbit’s digital expertise, while also providing Ikea customers additional ways to access flexible and affordable service solutions to meet the needs of today’s customer,” Brodin said.
The specifics of the deal — including the price — were not immediately available. But Ikea said TaskRabbit will become an independent subsidiary, and that CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot and other employees would remain in San Francisco.
Competition has been mounting for Ikea from rivals such as Amazon, which has also ramped up its offerings in home goods and installations.
The acquisitions marks the latest alliance between brick-and-mortar companies and those that offer on-demand services. Countless brickand-mortar retailers have partnered with delivery startups, such as Postmates and Instacart, to ease online shopping and home deliveries. Restaurants and fast-food chains have partnered with delivery services like Uber Eats, Grubhub and Doordash to offer home and office deliveries. In June, Amazon upended the grocery world by announcing it would buy Whole Foods; that deal was finalized in August.
“I see the acquisition of TaskRabbit by Ikea as part of a broader trend, where firms enhance the value to their customers by offering additional services, with these services provided by a third party,” said Saif Benjaafar, director of the University of Minnesota’s Initiative on the Sharing Economy.
With this acquisition, Ikea may now have access to TaskRabbit’s trove of data and information on user behavior. “It’s like buying a thousand anthropologists, who can say things like, ‘It looks like this population of urban, women Millennials are always asking for this task — could we sell a product that meets that need?’ ” Calo said.
Bob Hetu, a research director for Gartner focused on the retail industry, said deals between retailers and tech startups will likely become increasingly common.
“The idea here is that retailers need to offer more services for consumers, and there are logical extensions to that service environment,” Hetu said. “It’s a good illustration of where we’re going.”