Is there an Ikea in Kota Kinabalu? No, there isn’t (not yet anyway), but there sure are Ikea products for sale in Kota Kinabalu.

Towards the afternoon of New Year’s Day, Julia and I were strolling through Warisan Square in Kota Kinabalu, around the 3rd floor of the inside shopping area, when we came across a store neither of us have noticed before. It was a fairly big open space, with some funky looking furniture in it.

I am in the market for some funky furniture, so it grabbed our attention and we walked in. It’s then that we noticed, as we recently returned from Kuala Lumpur and visited the Ikea there, that much of the products they had on display looked familiar. A closer look revealed that most, if not all, of this store’s products are from Ikea. I, for one, was happy as I’m sure many others may be.
This new shop in Kota Kinabalu, that sells Ikea products, is called Living Concept and is on the 3rd floor of Warisan Square. Whether or not it’s affiliated with Ikea I can’t say, because I don’t know, but the shop stocks mostly, or entirely, Ikea products. The ones that we recognised were slightly more expensive than what we remember them from the Kuala Lumpur Ikea, but not a lot more.

There was a whole bunch of stuff at Ikea in Kuala Lumpur that tickled my fancy, but the cost of shipping would have made it a ridiculous buy. And who want’s to buy something ridiculous? Not me. But here we were, in a shop in Warisan Square right here in Kota Kinabalu, facing all these Ikea products.

We browsed through the shop and saw some interesting things. The variety was a bit limited though, so in the end, we left not having seen anything that I really needed, and with nothing purchased.

Last night, however (and here’s a hot tip), after we watched a movie, on our way to Starbucks, we saw them offloading a very big shipping container that was full of more Ikea products.

Thus, Living Concept, the store that stocks Ikea products in Kota Kinabalu, will receive another visit from me very, very shortly. Who knows, is living room furniture on the cards for me?