“IKEA Sundsvall was the first IKEA store north of Stockholm in Sweden.
It opened forty years ago and people from all over the northern parts
of all of Europe (at least Norway, Sweden and Finland) have been buying
their IKEA stuff here. Before the building complex housed IKEA and a
small shopping mall. In April of this year IKEA opened a separate house
for their store, next to the old mall, and built in the standard blue
and yellow IKEA style. Coming autumn a new IKEA store will open in
Haparanda-Torneå, the border twin towns between Sweden and Finland.

IKEA is the most important and popular tourist attraction of Sundsvall.
And the IKEA parking lot is a very popular camp site (!) for people
with mobile homes and caravans! Holiday-makers stop here for a couple
of days’ of shopping, mostly people from further north who are on their
way home after vacation in the south (Sweden is a long country). “

By northofsweden
View more her photos at FLICKR
© All rights reserved. Used with permission.

[Thanks Jen!]

“ALMHULT, SWEDEN — Most furniture chains don’t have hard-core fans who camp out in parking lots before grand openings or blog about copycat competition in China.

But Ikea is more than a chain. The blue-and-yellow warehouse jammed with low-cost, high-style furniture and housewares is closer to a design revolution.

At company headquarters this spring, project manager Lars Dafnas summed up Ikea’s appeal in just three words: “Natural. Blond. Solid.” It’s a short profile that has cut a long swath through the global
furniture market, making Ikea the world’s leading home-furnishings retailer….

…With $18.3 billion in sales last year, the world clearly likes what Ikea is doing.

At www.positivefanatics.com, the self-proclaimed “unofficial Ikea web journal,” megafans blog about Ikea news and share photos and wish lists.

Armand Frasco, who created the blog in November, said the site is so popular that people think he works for Ikea and regularly ask for him for job applications.

“It’s amazing,” Frasco said. “I hear from people in Michigan, Russia, Malaysia, everywhere.”

When the Houston Ikea opened at its new location in August 2004, the first customers lined up nine days before the doors opened. With a  $10,000 gift certificate as an incentive for the first, it’s easy to understand the motivation. But living in a tent city in the middle of a Houston summer is, as they say, a whole ‘nother thing..”

LINK

[Thanks to Allen Reid!]

Image: “Thar They Blow!” @ IKEA Lovers/FLICKR
ABF © 2006

            ”Walking, I am sure my little black pug Picadou would
            agree, is
the essential part of our day. If Picadou could talk,
            I think she
would say that grass is nice, but humans and canines––their
            
smells, habits and whereabouts (or nowhereabouts)––are
            the most
interesting. So when we go for our afternoon walk down
            the
Avenida Francisco Sosa, which has tall trees, whose branches
            hold
hands across the street, we don’t mind the lack of grass.

            But
first we have to hurry down our own narrow street. Beneath
            the
canopy of bougainvillea and lavender wisteria, birds chuckle;
            a
gecko slithers up a wall into ivy. Weeds and tufts of grass
            poke
between the cobblestones; Picadou picks her way eagerly,
            but
carefully as a cat.

            In the length of a ball’s toss we’re in
the alleyway of Montecristo,
            aiming straight at the Avenida
Francisco Sosa. Most of Montecristo
            is spanned by the jail-high
wall of the pumpkin-colored house
            that was listed by Sotheby’s
for several million dollars, but
            took as many million years to
sell (I suspect at a much lower
            price than was asked) because,
after all, its front door is on
            an alleyway. Here, the sidewalk
is only two flagstones wide and
            cars barrel past fast over the
jumbled stones, the chassis’ creaking
            and tires bumping. Picadou
does not like me to, but I pick her
            up and carry her. To avoid
the lamp post, I have to step down
            into the street; then, after
waiting for a VW van to rattle past,
            I step down again to go
around a smashed beer bottle. There goes
            the Domino’s Pizza
delivery scooter: put-put-put…”

Award-winning author C.M. Mayo takes us through the streets of Mexico City with her dog in her latest C.D.

VISIT.

[Thanks Lauren!]

“IKEA at Barkarby, Stockholm, Sweden”
By Oscar af Hässelby @ IKEA Lovers/FLICKR.

© All rights reserved.