The Curious Case of the Fake IKEA Store in China
In 2011, shoppers in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming walked into what felt, at first glance, like a familiar Scandinavian giant: blue-and-yellow facade, maze-like roomsets, warehouse shelving, even the little pencils. Except it wasn’t IKEA at all. It was an imitation called 11 Furniture, and this fake IKEA store in China quickly became a global talking point.
What made this case so striking wasn’t just a copied logo or a few knockoff chairs. This was an entire retail world cloned: the layout, the experience, the cafeteria, right down to details that regular visitors associate with a weekend trip to IKEA. Understanding how and why this copycat store appeared tells us a lot about design, brand power, and how retail evolves in fast-growing markets.
What Was the Fake IKEA Store in China?
The most widely reported fake IKEA store in China was a four-story furniture shop in Kunming called 11 Furniture. In Chinese, its name “Shi Yi Jia Ju” sounded remarkably similar to IKEA’s Chinese name “Yi Jia Jia Ju,” which already blurred the line for local consumers. Spread across roughly 10,000 square meters, the store didn’t just borrow a mood from IKEA; it mirrored specific visual and spatial cues that people around the world recognize.
Kunming is a major city in Yunnan province, but at the time it did not have a genuine IKEA nearby. Instead, residents found 11 Furniture, which functioned as an all-in-one imitation furniture store China shoppers could access without traveling to coastal megacities like Beijing or Shanghai. The store appeared around the same period that several fake Apple stores in Kunming were shut down, so global media were already watching the city’s retail scene closely.
The discovery came through bloggers and reporters who documented the store’s uncanny resemblance to a real IKEA. International coverage quickly framed it as a new stage in brand copying: no longer just fake bags and DVDs, but entire store concepts reproduced in detail.
How 11 Furniture Copied the IKEA Experience
What set the Kunming fake IKEA apart from basic brand imitation was how deeply it replicated the full environment. From the street, the building was washed in the now-iconic blue-and-yellow combination associated with IKEA worldwide. That same color story continued indoors, making the place instantly recognizable to anyone who had visited an authentic store before.
Inside, the design went beyond colors. There were showrooms arranged as complete, livable spaces: mock living rooms, bedrooms, dining zones, and compact urban layouts. The signage used a similar font style and visual language. Even specific furniture pieces, such as a rocking chair design, looked like direct echoes of IKEA products. To the average customer, it felt less like a local original and more like a parallel universe version of the Swedish brand.
The imitation did not stop at furniture. 11 Furniture reproduced familiar props and rituals: warehouse-style shelving for stock, the small pencils customers use to jot down item numbers, and large blue-and-yellow shopping bags. All of these together turned the store into a true IKEA copycat store rather than simply one selling lookalike products.
The Cafeteria Twist: Chinese Menu, Swedish Concept
The fake IKEA store in China also copied one of the most beloved parts of IKEA culture: the cafeteria. Located inside the Kunming shop, the dining area followed the same functional, unfussy look: simple wooden tables, straightforward seating, and a self-service feel. Visually, it nudged customers into the same rhythm of “shop, then eat” that real IKEA locations have perfected.
However, there was a distinctly local twist. Instead of Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam, which have become a global symbol of the IKEA trip, this store served Chinese-style dishes, such as braised minced pork and eggs. The approach was less about copying specific recipes and more about borrowing the cafeteria-as-retail-experience idea and adapting it to local tastes and expectations.
For customers, that blend made 11 Furniture feel even more complete. It mimicked the international retail model, but the food grounded it in Kunming’s everyday life. This kind of hybrid concept is part of why analysts saw the store as an important case in how global brand aesthetics get reinterpreted in emerging markets.
Key Differences Between 11 Furniture and a Real IKEA
Despite the visual overlap, there were clear differences once you looked past the surfaces. One of the biggest was the way products were sold. IKEA’s entire business rests on flat-pack furniture: you buy a box, assemble the piece at home, and the company saves on storage, shipping, and labor. In Kunming, furniture from the copycat store came pre-assembled. That shifted the logistics, the value proposition, and the expectations around delivery and setup.
Customers also noted that while the store strongly resembled IKEA, it lacked the same level of order and polish. Displays and stock areas appeared less neatly arranged, and the overall finish did not always match the refined consistency of a genuine IKEA interior. This gap matters, because brand trust often comes from small signals: tidy stacks, reliable stock labeling, and repeatable organization from one location to another.
Importantly, the knowledge we have does not confirm that the products themselves were counterfeit IKEA goods. The furniture is better understood as replicas or lookalikes, with the entire retail environment built to imitate IKEA brand design copy rather than to pass off items as original stock.
Why Local Shoppers Still Went to the Kunming Fake IKEA
Even though some visitors recognized that 11 Furniture was not authentic, many still chose to shop there. The main reason was simple: access. For residents of Kunming, reaching a legitimate IKEA meant a long and expensive journey to cities like Beijing or Shanghai, or paying significant shipping costs for large, heavy pieces. The imitation was physically nearby and easier to use for furnishing a home on a reasonable budget.
Some customers had never been to a real IKEA at all; they understood only that this was a modern, well-presented imitation furniture store China had produced to fill a gap. Others had experienced genuine stores elsewhere but were willing to trade down in quality or accuracy for the convenience of having something similar in their own city.
This behavior underscores a central tension in global branding. Design-forward brands raise consumer expectations far beyond their own actual network of stores. When these expectations travel faster than the physical brand does, copycat businesses can step in to meet the demand, even if, from a legal or ethical standpoint, they cross clear lines.
