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)
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“We finally began to inch our way towards the huge blue and yellow
mass looming in the distance. As we neared the home stretch, we passed a Home
Depot and Jordan’s Furniture, neither of which must have been pleased by the
arrival of their new low cost, imported neighbor.
We decided to ditch the car a little further from the store than
necessary–a wise decision that assisted in a speedy escape. We entered the monstrous building via the parking garage and were
whisked to the next floor on an escalator. As we reached the top we were
pushed into a crowded foyer of couples and families with small children. The
smell of warm cinnamon buns filled the air eliciting audible stomach growls from
passers-by. A second escalator beckoned, promising a speedy delivery to the
showroom and a $5.99 herbed salmon dinner.
The S/O was entranced by the tear-off, disposable measuring sticks.
“Ow, how often do you wish you had one of these,” she cooed. Afraid of getting
lost, I grabbed a combo map/blank shopping list. There were even mini-golf
score pencils to jot down your wants and needs. I quickly realized I grabbed
the wrong map when it said I was being escalated to the “segunda pisa”. Silly,
me, I thought I was shopping in an Swedish store in America.
As soon as the escalator stopped, we were swept into a current that
pushed us through the various display rooms–I felt like a human herring forging
my way up river. Not liking crowds too much, I took my only solace in Olivia
Newton-John piped in over the sound system, inquirying if I’ve “never been
mellow.” Mellow in this place?”
Codder
“Cape Cod Cabin Fever, Part II: Journey to Ikea”
Cape Cod Today
LINK
[Thanks Jen/OH IKEA]
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“Today i wanted to find a desk and pay 10 bucks for it. i know that sounds crazy, but i was on a mission. so i went over to the ikea store. i thought maybe i could find something in the “as is” section. i spent a good amount of time looking at boxes that were like half open and the stuff wasnt put together at all. then the name was something like alkjfalsjg (because everything is in a different language ya know) so i would drag the box over to this little catalog and try to match up the item numbers. well then i asked for help and this guy that works there and this other guy that was just shopping around joined my mission. i told them i wanted like 3 pieces of wood that could be a desk type thing. so they found 2 old pieces of different desks and they made a desk for me!!! it was amazing,”
StefShaf
LINK
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“I am SO excited that we will soon have an Ikea so close. I
live in Folsom, and became aquainted with Ikea about 2 years ago from my
daughter in Orange County. The first time I went I spent 5 hours there. Now
when I go to Emeryville, I spend the day, Shop, lunch, and shop some more. I
love it!!
Thanks for building a store here!( I am writing right now from my Ikea
computer desk)”
Brenda H.
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“It’s because it offers a view of a perfect world. A world where everything is clean, everyone is happy, where everything works.
Nobody ever has a bad hair day in the Playmobil world. There is no
graffiti or litter. The mail always arrives on time. The postman is
happy with his lot. And his van is clean and shiny.
And something else struck me, then. That Ikea offers a similar hope.
If you fill your house with our stuff, then your life will be as
perfect as that guy’s. Yeah, him. The the one smiling at his daughter
as she sits in an egg-shaped chair, grinning back at him. (No toys
strewn everywhere here. No mess for Dad to clean up.)
I guess they are both selling the same kind of hope…”
Capcloud
LINK
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“Hey, just checked out ohikea and your site-saving them to my favorites!
I’ve been to the Pitts store six times in 2005.
Check-out lines drive my husband nuts!! He doesn’t think they are terribly useful.
Got into a “charge only” line that kinda pisted me off!
But I have nothing but love for the blue mothership…our first trip, we emptied out our 98 Nissan Sentra to take home a Billy bookcase we didn’t know we needed.
We tried delivery service…not worth it. $125.00 to deliver over $700.00 - and it isn’t even their truck!
Leasing their vehicle might work; we have an Enterprise Rental Car here in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, we can drop off the truck to them.
God, I love IKEA!
Carolyn Tavolier
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Justine sent us this link to a discussion on IKEA. If you’ve never been to one, this is a good introduction:
“‘The trick is to go early when they open. Avoid the afternoon rush and get a 1.99 breakfast.
Go
to the “junk yard” as I call it where people who build stuff or bought
stuff had to return it. Save a fortune on stuff there or find shelves
and parts and make an art project out of it. Lots of scraps in the bins
if you like digging through stuff and then warming up the power tools
at home.
Oh yeah. When you get the car loaded up with knives,
shelves, boxes, frames, and plastic nick-knacks then grab some
meatballs to go and eat them with a good beer or wine for lunch.
Do not drink and drill.”
James T. at the San Francisco Weekly YELP
LINK
Image: Myles D. Grant @ IKEA Lovers/FLICKR
Some rights reserved.
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Image: Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
“Once upon a time there was a young Swedish boy by the name of Ingvar
Kamprad. By hard work and an enormous amount of persistence he managed
to build a glorious company that he decided to call IKEA (guess where
the “I” and “K” in the name comes from). This part of the story
everybody (at least all Swedes) know already, but here’s something no
one ever told you before.
Once on Ingvar’s many trips through
the dark and dangerous woods of Småland, he encountered a giant with
magical powers. Apparently, Ingvar had built one of his warehouses in
just the place where the giants of Småland used to hold their midsummer
raves, so now was time for revenge. And a bad revenge it would be. The
giant knew that the worst blow he could hit Ingvar with, was attacking
his precious company. However, the giant’s powers were limited, so he
couldn’t perform all the magick he actually desired to. He had to
restrict himself to one of a couple of alternatives. And the devious
creature decided to let poor Ingvar make the choice…”
By Ernst Nathorst-Böös’ Blog
A Branding Fable
Read on.
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“If Dante had written his Inferno today, he might have added a tenth circle
of hell – visiting Ikea on a Sunday.
Ikea is one of the few reasons why having a job where you work weekends -
and have the odd weekday off – is a godsend. Visit an outlet of the furniture giant on a Tuesday afternoon and it’s just
a trip to the shops. Visit on a Saturday or a Sunday and you may well end up
with Vietnam-style flashbacks.Ikea has played a huge part in the lives of Britons since the opening of
the first store in 1987. On any given Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people in the UK visit an
Ikea. Last year 33 million people visited one of the stores.
It has even been estimated that one in 10 Europeans are conceived in an
Ikea bed. Indeed, if you bump into a Briton under the age of 50 who has never visited
Ikea, it is not unlikely that they are either from the Hebrides, or a member of
the aristocracy.”
“The pleasure and pain of Ikea”
By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News Magazine
Image: “Meditation” (Modern monk)
By El Oso @ IKEA Lovers/FLICKR.
© All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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