Image credit: IKEA
Tight quarters call for furniture that can do and be many things. The problem is that a lot of the time, while multifunctional furniture makes sense, it lacks when it comes to style. That’s what impressed me so much about IKEA’s new UGGLERUM Side Table. Not only does it solve the problem of having a living room that’s too space-poor for a coffee table, but it also has a certain mid-century sensibility that made me question if it really could be from the big-box Swedish brand……..Continue reading….
Source: Livingetc
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Critics:
Rather than being sold pre-assembled, much of IKEA’s furniture is designed to be assembled by the customer. The company claims that this helps reduce costs and use of packaging by not shipping air; the volume of a bookcase, for example, is considerably less if it is shipped unassembled rather than assembled. This is also more practical for European customers using public transport, because flat packs can be more easily carried.
IKEA contends that it has been a pioneering force in sustainable approaches to mass consumer culture. Kamprad calls this “democratic design”, meaning that the company applies an integrated approach to manufacturing and design (see also environmental design). In response to the explosion of human population and material expectations in the 20th and 21st centuries, the company implements economies of scale, capturing material streams and creating manufacturing processes that hold costs and resource use down, such as the extensive use of medium-density fibreboard (“MDF”), also called “particle board”.
Notable items of IKEA furniture include the Poäng armchair, the Billy bookcase, and the Klippan sofa, all of which have sold by the tens of millions since the late 1970s and early 1980s. The IKEA and LEGO brands teamed up to create a range of simple storage solutions for children and adults. The IKEA effect is a phenomena where customers value an item more if they contributed to its creation, compared to an otherwise identical pre-assembled item.
Although named after IKEA’s flat-packed furniture, it also applies to other assembly-required items such as LEGO. The effect is only seen after construction, with consumers believing they would be willing to pay more for pre-assembled items beforehand. Possible explanations for the increase in value include the enjoyment of the assembly process and increased feelings of competency from a successful construction. If the item is subsequently disassembled, or the consumer fails to assemble it, the increased value is lost.
IKEA products are notably easy to hack and DIY, which also increases sales among customers. The term IKEA Hackers comes from a group who hack and create new things using IKEA products. The DIY hackers use IKEA products to make new unique items. The IKEA Hackers have created a community with the DIY style projects. There are also companies that create products to facilitate this.
IKEA products are identified by one-word (occasionally, two-word) names, predominantly in the Swedish language (or otherwise Scandinavian in origin). With few exceptions, most product names are based on a special naming system developed by the company. The company founder Kamprad was dyslexic, and found that naming the furniture with proper names and words, rather than a long product code, made the products easier to identify and remember.
Products are usually named after locations in Scandinavian countries, using names of places in Sweden for sofas and coffee tables, Denmark for textiles, and Norway for beds. Lamps get their names from seas and lakes, while outdoor furniture is named after islands. A number of IKEA’s products bearing Swedish names have (or have had) pronunciations that are humorous to some and offensive to others (but no less “lost-in-translation”), by not only English-speakers but speakers of many different languages.
At times, this product identification has resulted in certain names being changed or withdrawn completely from certain markets. More often than not, this confusion is simply a result of the Swedish language not being executed correctly, let alone understood, by the reader; nonetheless, this has resulted in potentially “naughty”—or even gravely offensive—connotations, depending on the area in question.
Notable examples (for English-speakers) include a since-discontinued (2013) computer desk called jerker (referring to “the jerks” or “jerks”), a foliar plant spray called fukta (“moisten”), a workbench called fartfull (“speedy”, “quick”), and a table called lyckhem (pronounced roughly as “look-em”), meaning “bliss” or a “happy home”.Due to several products being named after real places, some locales have ended-up sharing names with objects considered generally unpleasant, such as a toilet brush being named after the lake of Bolmen, or a rubbish bin named after the Norwegian village of Tofte.
In November 2021, VisitSweden.com launched a jocular campaign named “Discover the Originals”, which invited tourists to visit the physical locations that have received such unfortunate associations with IKEA products.
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