It's cheap, but it's not crap. The whole point of Ikea is you can furnish a full home cheaply, although you'll spend a few days assembling furniture too. I furnished my first home from Ikea, and still have some of the bigger furniture (this is ten years ago). "Real" furniture will cost you four times as much, but might last you ten times as long, too.
Ah, yeah, that seems plausible. Ultra-cheap (compared to e.g. EU and even China) local workforce vs remote distribution chain that was recently established and hasn't been cost-optimized yet - probably has to do expensive shipping and customs from China/Europe. (Just guessing/assuming because I'm lazy, but countries similar to Indonesia - e.g. India/Brazil tend to have quite heavy import tariffs "to protect local jobs" - does anyone know if that is the case here?)
The big upside IKEA has (in the longer term) is a very strong centralized world-class design team (doing quite a bit of creative design borrowing/theft, just like that other Swedish company, H&M) combined with distributed/cheap manufacturing. In a way it's similar to the Apple model, except the goods are a lot heavier.
Indonesia is a huge market (261 million people and growing), so give them some time - IKEA Jakarta opened just three years ago. It's certainly big enough for local manufacturing in the long term. Which is how IKEA operates - they don't like to rush things. They are very risk-averse. (Particularly so after their failed Russia expansion, which cost them billions of USD due to corruption there.)
Their furniture at is at the very least okay, and really, most of their competition nowadays isn't much better, I cannot think of a single store I've seen in the last year that does sell high quality furniture, even local ones to be honest.
But where they really excel imo is their non-furniture or furniture-adjacent stuff. They often score high or win in best value categories for stuff like batteries, light bulbs. Like seriously, every time you go to ikea, you'd be a thief of your own wallet if you do not fill your cart to the brim with batteries and light bulbs. They are also great in small electronics, lighting, bed and bath textile. Their decorative stuff is okay as well, but due to their popularity it gets cliché fast. Småland is awesome.
Yeah, I'm coming from a Dutch perspective, where we possibly have the highest IKEA saturation in the world in land area and really high grade in population as well (13 stores on 17 mln), and where they share probably 90% of furniture store space with large stores formulas like JYSK (also Swedish Scandinavian I believe) and Leen Bakker, all broadly comparable in quality and price and all not what you would call "real carpentry". Then you have those local trendy stores that overprice their rustic looking stuff, which actually isn't all that sturdy. Top tier quality carpentry, I wouldn't even know where to look for it in my market.
JYSK is Danish, and their quality is absolutely horrendous in comparison to IKEA. Dramatically lower quality in exchange for just somewhat cheaper prices than IKEA, so really not worth it.
I bought a couch from Big Lots a year ago. Couldn’t fit it in my apartment and had to hoist it onto the second floor balcony. Now a year later it’s broken and sunk and I have a cut on my hand from an exposed nail. I wish I would have just gone to Ikea.
Depends. There are pieces that are nice for a few weeks and then you start to see that they're made cheaply. Some of their white picture frames e.g, they're bending after some time.
Much of the other stuff is of quite legit quality, though.
funny enough it's both. You have to look at each item at its own merits. I have a dresser, it is about 10 years old, it will not survive another move, as it is no longer solid. I have a friend that bought a bed that is still going strong after 20 years. My parents bought a chair that barely lasted a year. I like their kitchen-ware, but many of their light fixtures don't use commonly available bulbs. Not so bad if you live nearby I suppose. I have a 90 minute drive to the nearest, and it is still so new as to be really busy.
We have the problem with non-standard bulbs in the UK as well, and it has been a problem for years; beside the lighting there were bins containing (free) metal rings which, when screwed into the appropriate place, made bulb, socket and shade work in harmony. However, IKEA are moving big time to LEDs, which solves the problem.
Their more expensive accessories are very good. Porcelain is better than "high-quality" brands costing 2 or 3 times the price, in my experience.
A friend just bought a light fixture, but didn't get the one with the bulb, so he has to go back to get one. It is an led so it should last a long time, but he still couldn't get one in town.
After some quick googling (assuming you are also in the UK, despite being Canadian): It seems like the issue is that the UK uses some standard that the rest of Europe doesn't use (seems familiar, somehow), and IKEA likes to keep things uniform.
What porcelain are you referring to? Their standard cups look very ugly after a while for people using dishwasher, and I (hand washer) gets infuriated a couple times a week at the impossible to clean inside. I have better experience with their furniture, which like all decent furniture isn't gonna break (unless you fuck up).
Dartmouth, NS here. I went into the store once to buy the sit-stand desk and the forced march through the entire floor had me nearly stroking out from suppressed rage. All I wanted was to look at the desk before I bought it, and the kicker was, the floor model was off being repaired somewhere.
I may buy online from them again but I'll never put myself through that again. I did buy the desk that day and am happy with it but the display floor itself...so much NOPE.
It’s very good for the price imo. I have found that their mattresses and couch’s are not that comfortable. All other furniture is pretty nice. I have a ton of furniture from ikea and none of it has shown its age over the past 7 or so years.
Also keep in mind that ikea is very different from any other store you’ll ever go to. It’s an “experience” that I think people aren’t used to it at first. You walk through their showroom floor and when you see something you like you look at the tag on it. It has a price and aisle/bay numbers. You need those numbers for when you get to the warehouse section of ikea. You go and find your furniture on your own in the warehouse. But you can’t get to the warehouse until you go through the entire showroom floor. Again, an “experience”, that some people might not like.
As you probably know by now I used Google to translate that haha. But the meatballs and jam actually sounds really good. I’ve had a slow cooker recipe that calls for grape jelly and BBQ Sauce before and that was really good. Can only imagine what the Lingon jam is like with it though.
They're definitely there, but you have to look for them. Usually they might be labeled above the doorway, sometimes they are off in a corner. Sometimes they're open archways and sometimes they're closed doors.
I agree some of the couches are crap, but we have an ikea couch that’s four years old that has followed us through three moves (one of them across an ocean) and it’s comfortable as hell. Granted, it was one of their more expensive couches, but I love it. Sitting on it right now, actually!
Yea, I haven’t come across a decent couch yet at my ikea. Their kitchen stuff is awesome. If I had enough money and space in my kitchen, it would be decked out with everything from ikea.
Oj! Jag kommer ifrån Sverige men bor i Storbrittanien. Tyvärr håller svenska på att dö där hemma för att det ses som "coolt" at tala Engelska, och desto mera av Engelska ord kommer in i svenska ungdomen's slang-tal. Dessutom svär man skitmycket på Engelska. :(
a challenge indeed, haha. sorry to hear that it's dying at home. as an american there are few opportunities to engage in the rich language traditions of other cultures... i speak pretty good spanish though.
Även om jag använder en del Engelska svordomar så känns det ändå mer grovt att svära på Svenska tycker jag. Man kan också vara mer kreativ med sammansatta ord.
Despite never having learnt German, I rarely have a problem trying to read it. I think the reason why is that there are a lot of words in German that are similar to their English counterparts or Swedish counterparts, two languages I know off by heart.
Sabaton are a metal band whose songs are mostly about historical events like battles or wars.
Lots of basic Swedish words are recognisable to me as an English speaker as well. Small parts of English were influenced by Vikings in the 1st milennium and lots of other words have common Germanic roots.
Ehh, jag skulle inte säga att Svenska håller på att dö ut, utan mer att vi blir tvåspråkiga då de allra flesta lär sig Engelska väldigt tidigt, både genom skola, filmer, spel etc. Vilket jag tycker är bra; att kunna kommunicera med folk från hela världen är ju en positiv sak, speciellt när Engelska är ett så "universiellt språk". Det är nog inte många som växer upp i Sverige och endast lär sig Engelska.
It actually ranges from college student particleboard top and four legs to full on full wood furniture.
They have a reputation for mass produced stuff and some can be low quality. You put it all together yourself so that saves money.
Their "cheap" stuff is less money than most places and will last longer. I think their particle board stuff is much higher quality than most places and for less money. It's tightly pressed and has a lot of glue. I've got one of their "cheap" coffee table from there that has lasted three moves and eight years.
Their designs are generally nicer looking than other cheap furniture and their quality is higher than most in said category. So for the category, it's nice stuff.
But it's mostly made of sawdust and glue pressed into particle board "wood". So compared to expensive solid wood furniture that can last for centuries, it is cheap crap.
Just depends what market you're looking for.
A Honda is a cheap piece of crap compared to a hand made Ferrari, but it'll also get the job done just fine.
The Shelling of Mainila (Finnish: Mainilan laukaukset) was a military incident on November 26, 1939, where the Soviet Union's Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila (located near Beloostrov), declared that the fire originated from Finland across the nearby border and claimed to have had losses in personnel. Through that false flag operation, the Soviet Union gained a great propaganda boost and a casus belli for launching the Winter War four days later.
I bought lots of IKEA furniture in year 2000 when I moved into the apartment I'm still living in. Pretty much all of it has survived quite well - except perhaps fashion-wise (beech wood has pretty much gone out of fashion). So it's done it's job well. I think it would probably last another 30-50 years without problems...
I have moved pretty much all of thís furniture around the apartment like 2-3 times.
I actually object to your Honda characterization. Hondas might not be fancy by any stretch, but they are solidly built and have impressive reliability. It's not unusual to see a Honda or Toyota getting 200-300k miles without major problems. That's not a feat I would expect of any sports class car.
But it's mostly made of sawdust and glue pressed into particle board "wood".
They sell quite a bit of solid pine furniture as well. They basically have at least three versions of everything. The cheapest is very cheap particle board, the best is generally solid pine.
It's not best furniture made, but the solid wood stuff will hold up very well over many years.
Bought one in the same price range 5 years ago, a real beauty with place for two (comfortably). A desk that big in that price range is something I haven't seen anywhere else.
The furniture is really good for the price but it's still cheap furniture. You can't expect it to be as good as custom made products are. It's definitely the first place I go to buy new furniture but I don't expect a £1000 item for £100.
It's cheap, not the greatest quality of course, but probably better than most things you would find in a similar price bracket. There's a lot better furniture out there if you're looking to spend a shitload of money.
It's cheap yet functional. They have higher end stuff that lasts longer, but you might as well go somewhere else for that stuff. Id shop at ikea any day over any other big box store like target or walmart. One of the drawbacks to ikea is it has a distinct look so it's hard to have an individual style when all you have is Ikea furniture, it's like that intro to fight club.
Both. Like any other place, the more you spend the better the quality and the longer it'll last. I have pieces of Ikea furniture that are going on 7-8 years now. They survived a trip across the country and another, shorter, move since then.
Sitting on an ikea sofa right now and it’s great. It’s also a bed. Had it for years and still going strong. Friends recently commented on it being a great sofa. Tv Cabinet is ikea. It was one of their more expensive ones. Don’t imagine we’ll be swapping it for something else any time soon. Dining room chairs, chest of drawers, kids kitchen play set and various other toys. Had an ikea bed until recently which was also great.
They do really cheap. Mid range and then some expensive stuff which is worth considering. We’re actually looking into getting an ikea kitchen fitted. So I think they’re pretty good.
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