Ikearrhea
Ikea is the Swedish Wal-Mart. Big store, lots of stuff, really cheap. Difference? Only one is great.
It is not Wal-Mart, the one that is great.
Evidence of this: you don’t see hundreds of people camped out in tents waiting for a new Wal-Mart to open (unless they’re protesters). Ikea, which opened its first store here in Minneapolis last Wednesday, had depression-era-like lines two days in advance. Granted, this is Minnesota, where those with Scandinavian ancestry are just lending out the state to the rest of us. But the mock-Swedish patriotism was just a part of the draw.
And the cheap prices alone didn’t explain it either. We live in America you’d better believe it! There’s never a shortage of cheap things. You can go anywhere and find them: Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Sam’s Club…even grocery stores sell some cheap clothing and home furnishings.
But most people understand the basic opposition between quality and quantity. A $3 pack of clothes hangers at Wal-Mart is cheap because the hangers are as sturdy as beverage straws. Or because they’re guaranteed not to disintegrate in water (if they need a guarantee, something’s fishy). It seems to me that Wal-Mart’s stuff is cheap because of some unpleasant arrangement between them and the manufacturers, and because it’s not of great quality.
The mysterious thing about Ikea is how it evades the relationship between cost and quality. At first I didn’t want to believe it. I accompanied my girlfriend there Sunday with healthy skepticism. “Cheap things can’t also be good things,” I kept saying to myself, rocking back and forth.
Embarrassed, my girlfriend shook me out of it in time to find a nice cozy spot in the tsunami-like crush of people heading for the entrance. We were expulsed sometime later, atop an escalator, facing the first of 50 model rooms. The size of the place is hard to grasp until you see it; let’s just say it sits across from the Mall of America, and has nothing to be ashamed about.
Despite the horde of people (11a.m. Sunday), it was possible to actually see the merchandise, and it became obvious that 90 percent of it was really, really cool. I tried to fight it, arguing that you couldn’t get decent quality at those prices. But the crowd drowned me out. And then I drowned myself out, with my nonstop exclamations about how amazing everything was.
An 8-pack of solid wood hangers with polished metal hooks, Swedish Wal-Mart style: $3.49.
A stylish paper lamp shade: $5.99.
A 4×6 reversible floor rug: $39.
A 3-piece kithcen utensil set: $0.99.
Ikea isn’t just cheap. It’s cheap and good. Somehow (and I’m not sure how), you feel like you’re getting more than you paid for. This is not kitschy, cheesy, horrid stuff. These products are not made of materials that appear to be leftovers from a botched Barbie factory. It’s good quality, well-designed stuff…cheap.
It’s a concept that takes some getting used to. It’s as if McDonald’s started selling a decent fillet mignon for the price of a Big Mac value meal.
Ikea also seems to have put a lot more thought into the whole process than many other discount retailers. Somebody over there in fjord-land decided it wasn’t impossible to sell good stuff at reasonable prices and even throw in a good shopping experience.
Yep. That’s right. No more Menard’s-style merchandise hunts. At Ikea, things are easy to find. You just walk through the model rooms and write down what you like. Then you go pick it up at the warehouse (don’t worry, it’s on site). It saves them money (since they don’t have to have a hundred pre-teen “associates” deciphering the riddles of the aisles). That, in turn, saves you money.
I don’t know if they have the whole country working on this thing over there in Sweden, or if they just hire good people, but the store is remarkably well designed. There’s a cafeteria for eating and a daycare for temporarily abandoning children. There’s a brass band playing near the checkout lines (at least, there was on Sunday), so you don’t get bored while you wait.
And here’s my favorite thing: the shopping carts. Somebody with a name I probably-can’t-pronounce-and-has-an-umlaut-in-it realized that this place was going to be jammed packed with people. But conventional shopping carts have a way of increasing congestion. They’re just not maneuverable.
At Ikea, they fixed that. The shopping carts have 360-degree wheels in the front and the back. So they can turn in place, move in any direction (including my favorite, sideways), and generally get through any space without getting stuck.
I know, I know. I’m a sucker, right? All it takes is another set of omni-direction wheels on the shopping carts and I’m a convert. “Where’s your skepticism, Bruno?” you’re muttering, in vain, at your computer monitor.
It’s at the bottom of a great big Ikea bag, that’s where. The combination of affordable, quality furnishings and attention to detail is a rare find. And the cute Swedish-sounding names on all the merchandise are a nice touch, too.
As for the shopping carts, I’m not apologetic. I truly think it’s the coolest innovation to hit discounting retailing since, well, discount retailing. And I don’t feel bad devoting attention to it.
What’s more, I’m not choosing favorites; the first American company to introduce omni-directional front and back wheels will get a detailed write-up right here in this space.
I just hope to god it’s not General Motors.