“”Is or isn’t Ikea sexist? After assuming that Swedish furniture was a bit on the
namby-pamby side, now I’m not sure. Crazed riots notwithstanding, in my mind it
all comes down to garden gnomes. As Gary noted in his post-Ikea post, one item
that caused us both to raise a giggling eyebrow were these terracotta
“gnome-like things.” Although Gary delicately avoided the question of what these
“things” really resemble, I’ll grab the “thing” by the hat. In ancient Greece,
people decorated their gardens with stone statues of Priapus, his mythic
endowments serving to scare away birds, fertility-draining demons, and
harvest-raiding thieves. “You don’t have to be rich, just smart,” the billboard
outside the Houston Ikea boasts: I’d add that to protect your garden and prove
your manliness, you don’t have to speak (or fight) loudly, just carry a big, um,
gnome-like thing. Fellows, if your mild-mannered Ed Norton lifestyle is growing
tiresome but you don’t want to break a well-manicured nail by punching a sweaty
stranger, you can buy a small but well-endowed Bad Boy–your very own gnome-like
thing–to patrol your garden. Sexist or no, terracotta manliness is kind of
cute. You don’t have to be rich to boast of such…”
Lorianne DiSabato
“Hoarded Ordinaries”
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Opinions
“As you walk in you are herded up the stairs and onto the second level. All their merchandise is laid out in context — i.e., “what room of the house are you interested in?” If you’re interested in bathroom items, the bathroom models have toothbrush holders, cotton ball containers, lamps, cabinets, towels, etc. right where you might want to see them yourselves.
Of course, if you’re looking for a specific thing — “where the heck are the kitchen towels?” — you don’t need the second level, you need the first one. The first level is for those who know what they’re looking for while the second level is for those not entirely certain what they’re looking for…two key methods of information retrieval. (More on the first level in a minute.)
The most interesting thing about the second level is that you can only move in one direction. Arrows on the floor and signs at critical junctures indicate that you’re moving through the store in a planned, straightforward manner. No need to panic — this is on purpose.
In fact, it reminded me of being on a carnival ride. You strap yourself into a seat along with many others and get whisked off through the Fun House or the Creepy Castle. At one point, I tried to break with the flow and move in the other direction. Beware to those who try! You may end up getting trampled…or at least some annoyed looks.
It made me wonder if this one-direction-only scheme is possible on a complex, e-merchandise web site. I would guess that you could try and do this with large splash pages or graphics on the front page, but my hunch (borne out by both IA and usability experts) is that web users have less patience for one-size-fits-all organizational schemes than those taking a Sunday afternoon stroll with their families…”
“The IA of IKEA Stores”
Kathagedorn.com
LINK
Opinions
“We’ve been waiting for a long time for Ikea to come to
Massachusetts. Until its recent opening in Avon, the nearest store was
in New Haven, Conn., and while we thought it worth the travel time, we
didn’t go often. All that’s changed.
It’s a bright blue building
with the name in huge yellow letters and brightly colored Ikea flags
snapping in the breeze. After passing through the entrance, Annette and
I head straight for the cafeteria. The question isn’t whether you want
Swedish meatballs with lingonberrys, but how many you’ll have. They’re
tender and savory and come with a couple of boiled potatoes to sop up
the gravy. If you ask for the smallest number, you’ll probably wish you
got more.
Annette had them on our first visit to the new store. I
got what they call marinated salmon, or gravlax. It came with a honey
mustard dill sauce. We split a slice of Daim torte, which was dense,
filled with crunchy candy bits, and topped with milk chocolate. On our
second visit, we tried the apple cake, which is packed with cooked
apple slices, brown with cinnamon and surrounded by a sweet shell. It’s
served with crème anglaise. Annette enjoyed an open-faced shrimp
sandwich, and I had a ham and cheese sub. The menu board said it was on
a baguette, but it was a sub roll…”
“Good eating: Lingonberrys and lamps at Ikea”
By Richmond Talbot
SouthofBoston.com
Image: “Elderflower and Lingoberry”
by Cobalt Femme @ IKEA LOVERS/FLICKR. Check out her photos.
Opinions
” With new stores appearing all the time, IKEA has sparked a national debate.
Some welcome the Swedish furniture giant to our shores; others detest all that
it stands for. Much like marmite, there is no middle ground – you either love it
or you hate it.
So whilst doing some redecorating I decided to make a
trip to my nearest IKEA to decide whether I was a lover or a hater. Oh, and I
compiled a few handy hints for any other undiscovered IKEA virgins out
there…
Oh, another word of advice, don’t go against the flow.
Tempting as it may be to return to the ‘Market Hall’ when you are in the
Warehouse, DON’T – YOU WILL ENCOUNTER PROBLEMS. Much like cattle or sheep being
herded into a field every visitor walks round the store in the same direction,
crowded together. Appropriate name ‘Market Hall’, I found out.”
“A Novice’s Guide To IKEA ”
By Sarah Tooze
MyVillage.com
Image: “IKEA from the Bus” taken in Barcelona, Spain
By Dagil @ IKEA Lovers/FLICKR
© All rights reserved. Used with permission.
Opinions
“Dear Ikea,
You know we love you. Certainly, anyone coming into my house would know
that I love you. From the wonderful chests of drawers in my bedroom, to the
little wall cabinet near our front door, much of our furniture came from you.
And of course, we obviously are big fans of your BOOKCASES!
The girls love coming to the store. Even though they are too old for the
play areas (at least SC is, and JR won’t go in solo) they love coming to the
store, trying out the furniture, playing in the toy area, and occasionally
creating a ruckus, though they’ve gotten LOTS better since the time Mommy took
them out and made them sit in the car until Daddy was through paying for our
stuff.
And of course we all love your food–the cafeterias are GREAT!
No, Ikea, we love you and we appreciate how child friendly you are, except
in one place.
Opinions
“From my experience of IKEA shops, they are the same the world over. From Copenhagen to Singapore, you go upstairs to start with and follow an interminable trail through every bleeding department until finally you descend to the warehouse and the checkouts. Even if all you want is that stainless steel balloon whisk from kitchenware, you still have to trudge along with the rest of the world and their screaming brats who are dawdling through beds and home furnishings and who for some reason feel it necessary to stop just in front to you to admire crappy sofas.
To the regular keen-eyed customer it becomes apparent that there are unmarked doors, used by the staff, that are shortcuts from one part of the shop to another, much like the secret passages in that old board game Cluedo. So with one simple move it is possible to get from the library to the conservatory (or in this case bookcases to potted plants).
I propose a website containing printable maps of all the IKEA stores all over the world showing their secret passages. Thus a new arrival in a city who just needs to buy a set of cheap (almost-)disposable plates can simply navigate straight to the crockery section without dicking around in the rest of the shop.”
Gordon Comstock
@ Halfbakery
Opinions
“I have a strange thing for Ikea; have since I first walked into its
pine-sawdust-scented space. It’s the perfect store for the unhandy handyman,
that’s me. It’s a store that makes a social statement: Poor young people need to
sit, too. I bragged for years that I got an entire dining room set in the back
of my Honda Civic hatchback; it’s a damned engineering marvel. And the meatballs
are good.
It’s so crazed that my wife and I actually went to vacation in Sweden
because we (I) liked Ikea so much: Any country that can create this must be
worth visiting, I said. And it was worth visiting: A country with the culture of
Europe and the convenience of America with beautiful women (they really) where
everyone speaks better English than anyone in America.
When I started Entertainment Weekly, famed adman Donny Deutsch, then a bit
of whippersnapper,
was our agency and when he got the Ikea account, I sat in my
office and showed him my Ikea furniture there and told him all the Ikea
furniture we had in our home. “Man,” Donny said, “you are seriously disturbed.”
That’s how Donny talked even then. I think there was an F word in there
somewhere.
Most of our Ikea furniture is gone, now that we’ve grown up. Just last
week, the kid-tolerant coffee tables went. Some shelves will never die but all
in all, our Ikea is fading like the color of my hair.
But it’s still in my genes, my Ikea fetish…”
“Box Life” by Jeff Jarvis
Buzzmachine
Opinions
“No, not that. There!” He sounded desperate, so I looked at the TV again.
“What? It’s a commercial. What am I looking for?”
“It’s IKEA.
They’re opening up a store in Emeryville,” he explained, beaming up at
me.
“IKEA? That’s why my heart is racing? What’s the big
deal?”
“It’s IKEA!”
“So you said. And?”
“The IKEA Paradox” by Rob Rosen
SoMa Literary Review
Image:”Dad at IKEA” By GlobalGlenn @ FLICKR
Some rights reserved.
Opinions
“But is IKEA good for us?
Certainly IKEA devotees think so. Or ask the people who go wild,
literally, when an IKEA opens in a new city. There was a near-riot at an IKEA in
London when thousands stormed the doors for the midnight opening; five people
were taken to the hospital. When Atlanta’s first IKEA opened in June, the queue
was so long “it took several hours for people to get into the store,” said store
manager Lynda Mee. “The first guy was in line here for eight days. He came with
a tent.” (He had another incentive besides shopping – a $4,000 IKEA gift card
for being first in line.)
Still, there are plenty of big-box stores that offer home goods with
low prices, and people don’t necessarily kill to get into them, which is what
happened at an IKEA in Saudi Arabia last year, where three people died in a
stampede caused by a discount offer. What is the lure of IKEA, and what hath it
wrought?
No doubt part of the attraction is its exoticism. In a nation of retail
uniformity, IKEA, founded in Sweden in 1943, offers shoppers the pretense, at
least, of being someplace else, and more interesting. It’s not only the Swedish
signage, restaurant menu and the Scandinavian furniture design, but the
strikingly un-American egalitarianism in the corporate structure: the curious
way employees are referred to as “co-workers,” the way IKEA designers with
refreshingly unfamiliar names get acknowledged in the catalogs and the collegial
we’re-all-in-this-together spin to the marketing…”
” They had the right IKEA”
By Linda Matchan
The Boston Globe via AZStarnet
Image: “IKEA @ Richmond” by HR on FLICKR
Some rights reserved.
Opinions
NO.6 : the red, yellow, and blue flags that greet you at the
