After more than a week spent mostly in bed with a flu, I finally felt well enough to venture into the world to buy a present for my kid. I ended up at Ikea. Man, what an experience!
I love the place. It's so bright and inviting, and full of ideas. An awful lot of them are bad ideas, but you forgive that because every once in a while you stumble on something that's a brilliant rethinking of something you thought couldn't be improved.
But like I said, it's not all good. Some of the kids rooms (above) bordered on child abuse. How do you like those High Kitsch flat-colored cabinets or the deliberately generic design of the ladybug? Why is the yellow stool so dorky?
On the other hand, you gotta love these bunk beds. Kids like stuff like that!
I think here in America we're shielded from the weirdest stuff (above). It would be great to go to Sweden and see what's for sale in the Ikeas there.
BTW: I haven't forgotten the Beatnik stuff. I'm working on it now, and it's a ton of fun. I was just too spaced out to do it earlier in the week!
9 comments:
Oooo! I'm not with you on this one. I DESPISE Ikea. If you know what you want, it's the worst place to shop. I went there to get bookcases, and I had to walk the entire store to see them. Different styles of bookcases were in opposite parts of the store, so I couldn't compare them side by side. I finally gave up and went home and used their website. I ordered online and arranged for pickup at their loading dock. You couldn't pay me to set foot in that labyrynth of confusion again.
Haw! I sympathize! It's doubly infuriating because you know the confusion is planned by the management!
Well, there's a lot wrong about the store, I admit. To love it like I do, you have to able to forgive its many faults and focus on the good things.
My grandmother was Swedish and I ate her Swedish Meatballs. Those nasty nuggets they sell at Ikea are definitely not Swedish Meatballs!
I wonder what Howard Roark would think of Ikea. Not much I'd wager. I was in Ikea myself a couple of days ago and I was looking at the bunk beds. If I was a kid I would LOVE them. Looking at them through an adults eyes I would take the ideas that Ikea put into them and improve on them and build my own from scratch as the quality it very poor. I would LOVE to hear some of your desk ideas as I have many myself.
I too am not big on the Ikea thing. I suppose if you had little money and were just starting out it might be a good beginning but the stuff is pretty shoddy and won't last,(lots of particle board).
My biggest complaint is similar to Stephen. You can't get out without going through the entire store. I suppose there have to be fire exits everywhere but I'm not going back to find them.
I like IKEA because it offers people with a small budget to be creative with their environment. Your environment, and how you react to it is an important aspect to living. IKEA makes it possible for people to customize their space.
However, I don't have any IKEA furniture. I do go there for cheap dish towels, small tool boxes, and simple kitchen ware. IKEA is like a watered-down Bauhaus - only thing is, form does not follow function. I think a lot of the bookshelves, bed frames, and desks are well designed as they're simple, look decent, and are functional. The chairs, lighting, etc. are poorly designed as they're too small, made from plastic, can't support a reasonable amount of weight, etc. I hope that any consumer doesn't expect an investment when shopping there, thinking that the products will stand the test of time and be there for future generations. You get what you pay for.
As for the store, I like the lack of fire safety exits there. I think the dioramas and walk through rooms are neat, but unnecessary. The store could be much smaller and less intimidating (like the monolith it is) if they figured out how to manage their space properly.
Hey Eddie! Swede here, I've been to IKEAs in the States and here in the motherland (including the Master IKEA at Kungens Kurva, Stockholm) and I have to say that the difference isn't that big... All IKEAs are built after the same blueprint.. The man who made Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad is an obsessive penny-pincher and that's why the store is designed the way it is. The display rooms are their own little sales pitches so that the big store can survive on a very small staff.. They were the first place here in Sweden to bring in self-checkout as a ways to reduce employees..
The furniture is ripped off whole-sale from more expensive Swedish furniture designers (whose designs are still ugly in my opinion!), and the quality is quite bad. The idea is to make the furniture as cheaply as possible so that the buyers won't have any reservations about throwing it out in a few years when the next big Ikea designs come along.. 'Slit och släng' as we say here in Sweden (wear out and throw out!). The consumerist aspect of it bothers me..
Ingvar has also gotten a lot of flack in the media here because he did business with the Nazis back in the day.. So he has that legacy going for him.. Many people in America have become fascinated with the empty promises of IKEA but I'm trying to warn them!! It's not all it's cracked up to be!
Shawn: Great! We'll compare desk ideas! I'd love to see what you came up with!
Steve: Ikea meatball dinners are good for the price: 10 meatballs, gravy, potatoes and lingonberries for $2.99...that's not bad for a light meal!
Joel: It's no small achievement to make low cost, sophisticated (well, sometimes) furniture designs that even low income people can afford.
Auralynn: I don't like getting lost in Ikea either, but it seems like a small price to pay for all the innovative ideas and cheap prices.
Erik: Many thanks for the well thought out comment! I'm glad to see that we're not missing out on much in the American stores.
Maybe I'm not as critical as you are of the store's attempts to keep costs down, at least not in the examples you mentioned. I think the idea of using diaramas to sell the products and not salesmen is brilliant.
Of course trading with the Nazis is horrible, but my country opened up trading with Mao who killed at least 42 million of his own people in The Great Leap Forward. The eased relationship with Mao may have been a mistake, but at the time it probably seemed like a good way to diminish tension between the countries. Maybe Kamprad had a similar idea.
I may be letting the man off way too easily, but since I like his store it's tempting to defend him until I know more about the situation.
Great!
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