Belarusian furniture company Swed House, which sells products similar to those made by Swedish giant IKEA, opened its first store in Moscow on Saturday to mixed reactions from consumers, Reuters reported.

IKEA suspended all retail and manufacturing operations in Russia shortly after Moscow, along with dozens of other Western companies, launched its “special military operation” against Ukraine.

“We are not IKEA – we strive to be like IKEA, we have our own brands, our own products. Yes, we also have IKEA products. We sell them – 15-20% of our assortment are original IKEA products. Nobody forbade it… our Swed House products are also in great demand,” said Swed House CEO Mamedali Kasimov.

Shoppers at the store, who declined to give their last names, expressed different opinions.

“We’ve been missing IKEA a lot lately. This new store is, let’s say, a good start,” Natalia said.

Others said the store was too small. “You don’t just need to stack the goods on top of each other. IKEA had a certain approach to product placement… you could lie on the beds, check out the furniture. If these guys want to develop, there’s still a long way to go. way,” said John.

According to Kasimov, initially, Swed House plans to open five stores in Moscow shopping centers, and then move to other regions of Russia next year.

IKEA briefly resumed online sales last summer, and part of the company still operates 14 shopping centers under the MEGA brand in Russia.