Through the Bat Cave
Notes from my Moleskine:
Ingvar Kamprad’s bilingual exhortations for a better life plastered over a huge poster of birch trees competed with a bright red Klippan for my attention as I entered. The couch won and I settled in the waiting room, breathless from the cold outside.
I started this blog last November, partly to document my move to a new apartment and share my curiousity for this company. In its roughly 3 months existence, I have seen impassioned rants, emotional raves and a few eye-rolling emails in between. All in the name of I.K.E.A. Recent mentions at Yahoo and by hip bloggers like Gawker and Design Sponge has brought more site traffic than anticipated. Those + previous preliminary emails = this first official meeting. I didn’t know what to expect.
Samantha Gravina, their new Chicago media person turned out to be as bubbly in real life as over the phone. The enthusiasm seemed genuine. I follow her through a maze of halls to the employees’ “co-worker’s” lounge.
The half-hour-or-so chat gave me an opportunity to state our website’s peaceful intentions and hear Sam’s abbreviated version of the inner workings within the Big Blue Box. Pleasant, concise but not perfunctory. I like her efficiency. Not much off-the-record corporate details. I’ll dispense the juicy “authorized” morsels in coming posts.
It was late on a dark, blustery Sunday afternoon when I finally emerged from what she fondly calls “The Bat Cave”. I saw the reddish glow of the metropolis towards the east. This little blogging adventure has truly begun. (TEXT & IMAGE: ABF)
Wonderful photo — as cozy and coffee and cookies at Ikea on a rainy day:)