IKEA Rival? Kmart Launches Furniture Store With 75¢ Candles and $300 Sofas 

The comparisons to IKEA started before the doors even opened. Kmart’s new K Home concept store launches June 18, 2026, in Box Hill South, Melbourne, a 3,800-square-metre dedicated homewares outlet positioned to rival IKEA, Amart Furniture, and Freedom. The launch targets a bigger slice of Australia’s $27.5 billion furniture and interiors market.

Customers shop the space for the first time on June 18, in what Kmart’s GM of store experience Courtny Keeble describes as a direct response to customer demand to “touch and feel” products before buying. This is Kmart’s biggest physical retail bet in years.

What Makes K Home Different From a Regular Kmart

K Home will largely stock big-ticket items not found in a regular Kmart store, including couches, mattresses, shelving units, and bookcases. Those categories had only existed as online-exclusive listings before now.

• The store features the Anko home-brand range, displayed across stylised, room-set layouts similar to a traditional furniture showroom.
• K Home operates as a standalone “home living” retailer, fully separate from Kmart’s traditional discount department stores.
• The Box Hill South location stocks furniture, candles, rugs, curtains, lighting, and kitchen and bathroom essentials but no clothing.
• The site occupies a former Decathlon space, a format retail agents say will make the concept easy to scale quickly if successful.

Why Kmart Chose Now to Challenge IKEA Directly

Anko’s Popularity Is the Foundation

Kmart, owned by Wesfarmers, plans to stock the full Anko range in-store alongside larger furniture and storage pieces that previously existed only online. Anko’s track record gives the concept a built-in customer base.

Commercial agent Jake Beckwith described Anko as “a bit of a cult figure,” adding that Kmart has “definitely got a big target audience they can capture.” Kmart is staying true to its long-standing “Low prices for life” promise even as it expands into bigger-ticket furniture categories.

How K Home Stacks Up Against IKEA’s Model

K Home is designed to pop up in shopping centres closer to where customers already live, unlike IKEA’s typically larger, standalone warehouse format. That distribution strategy is a deliberate point of difference.

The concept mimics IKEA’s approach of fully styled rooms and a clear home-living focus, but strips out non-home categories to sharpen the offer. Wesfarmers (ASX: WES), Kmart’s parent company, is using Box Hill South as a live test before deciding whether to scale the format nationally.

What Comes Next If the Trial Succeeds

Retail analysts see this as a way for Wesfarmers to test whether Kmart can compete in bigger-ticket furniture without overhauling its existing store network. If the trial works, expect K Home locations to spread quickly across other Australian shopping centres. Peer Australian retail names including Wesfarmers, Harvey Norman (ASX: HVN), and JB Hi-Fi (ASX: JBH) are all watching this category shift closely, given how directly it touches the broader home and furniture retail space.

Final Thoughts

Kmart’s K Home is a calculated bet, not a blind leap into IKEA’s territory. The 3,800-square-metre Box Hill South store gives Kmart a controlled environment to test whether shoppers will treat Anko furniture as a genuine alternative to established players.

Whether K Home expands beyond Melbourne will depend entirely on how customers respond over the coming months, and Wesfarmers has built the format specifically to scale fast if the answer is yes.

Disclaimer:

The content shared by Meyka AI PTY LTD is solely for research and informational purposes. Meyka is not a financial advisory service, and the information provided should not be considered investment or trading advice.