All be back later.
Henry
Silence! All of you! I accept no dissent within my lordly domain!
Finnish people: Takes every chance to discredit us Swedes.
Just because they were all macho and fought people in WWII… well, WHO’S GOT THE INTERNATIONAL FURNITURE COMPANY EH!? You think you’re so tough?! I’ll make sure you don’t get the right angle on your little metal thingy or the wrong size screws and I’ll have you crying like a baby!!
Yeah, that’s right, sucker. Not so cocky now are ya!?
Ps. Don’t hurt me. Please.
Stoneburg! I have some relatives in Your city, by the way.
You wrote:
Answer: Switzerland.
As far as I know the company left for Switzerland in order to avoid taxes. Godd business? Maybe, but if NOKIA would leave Finland, it would be boycotted the next day.
If good business is not to pay taxes, but to have workers that are schooled by tax-payers money…, so be it.
All firms should move their head-quarters to Isle of Man!
P.S. because I am in the furniture business, I know that the companies that are hitted hardest by Mr Kamprad are Swedish.
Henry
That freakin’ furniture. I HATE it, but I’m stuck with it, because I can’t afford new furniture.
But I love IKEA. I love their lamps, and I adore the rug PucksRaven and I got for half price.
Of course I was also stuck (for the longest time) with a hutch (resting on the floor, sans desk-- actually serving as a desk) because IKEA mislabeled their shelves, and we didn’t realize it wasn’t a desk-- since we were drunk when assembling-- until it was too late, and then we didn’t feel like dissasembling it and driving back across the bay.
No. Kamprad resides in Switzerland. The corporate headquarter is in Holland.
As for your link: a cached site, only quoting a headline from a tabloid is hardly any damning proof. When the story surfaced, back in '95, it made a public outcry. Kamprad quickly apologized. Story to be found here. While it is true that he embraced an ideology on the very far right, I have a feeling that he’s being targeted mostly because he’s a very wealthy man, not because of some things he actually did in the past. There is still many things about Sweden during WWII, including a friggin king with nazi leanings, that need to be taken care of first, IMO. That doesn’t mean Kamprad should get away with it, but it would not have created that uproar if he’d only owned a grocery store in his home village. There are, unfortunately, a lot of poeple just like him who never get exposed.
And Obsidian, what’s wrong with birch?
The only time I’ve ever been to IKEA, there were signs up saying to ask staff for help with certain heavy things and plenty of staff around to do that. It still wasn’t easy to do on my own, but they did do what they could to help.
IKEA. Black & Decker ought to thank IKEA as it has almost single handedly created the increased demand for cordless drills with screwdriver attachments over the last 15 years.
PS- if you know a college-aged kid who doesn’t own one, the Holidays are almost upon us.
Oh, God. The dreaded IKEA=Nazi bullshit again.
Henry, I just opened up that paragon of Finnish industrialism sitting on my desk, the Nokia 6310i. Well I’ll be fucking damned. It’s made in Germany, of all places! A Third Reich phone, under the guise of that peaceful Finnish flag?
The horror, the horror!!
Gah. Kamprad was a mere lad. Do you want to know how many youths between 10 and 18 joined Hitler-Jugend type movements before and during WWII, all over Europe? And do you then want to attack each and every one of them 60 years later, even if their participation never went any further than a few youth marches?
A former naive Hitler youth does NOT constitute a Dachau guard, for fuck’s sake.
See, this is why all you folks dissing Heart of Darkness over in the other forum should get with the program!
Heart of Darkness and IKEA in the same post… Will I ever experience this much pleasure again?
The Gaspode and Coldfire!
You are both right.
I am, in fact pissed with Kamprad mostly because he has put such many cooperating companies into or top tyhe edge of bancrupcy.
Nokia has some few % of its works in Finland. But, and here comes the very important “but”, they pay taxes to Finland!
I just read a book where someone told that 5 main incurence companies in “a north-American country”, had put themselves in an island where the taxes where about zero.
What piss me of, regardless what country we are talking about, is that these guys are usually so fucking patriotic.
So patriotic that they even leave the taxes to the averige guy.
Henry
1st: Cool! If you tell me exactly where they live I could deliver some inferior furniture 
I only know two finnish peole here though, Asko and Kuivanen, any of them related to you?
2:nd You’re preaching to the choir. I’m not very impressed with big companies that leave the country for tax benefits, neither am I very patriotic. Hell, If I had my way they’d be governmentalised!
You’d rather make businesses state-owned than have them relocate for tax purposes? Wow, that’s pretty scary.
Henry B, as a resident of a country with a favourable corporate tax climate, I can’t say I’m too negative about big multinationals pitching a tent on the Dutch plains. The additional economical input from fat expat salaries is also appreciated, and it adds to the diversity of an already quite heterogenic country. It’s all cool with me.
Perhaps your real beef ought to be with Finnish fiscal policy, unable to contain its own companies and driving them across the border.
Well I was exaggerating, my socialist view is that all important infrastructure and institutions that are vital to society should be state-owned, IKEA doesn’t really fall into this… but what the hell.
The Finnish fiscal policy allowed the company to raise to where it is, top of the world, it allowed for some of the most competent workers in the world and one of the best infrastructures to support them. Basically, taxes well spent helped get them there but once there, they don’t want to help pay the bills, so they run somewhere they won’t have to. This is a common problem in Scandinavia but I don’t think we should “compete” with the states that are “luring” companies away. Actually, I’d rather see them being state-owned if it was a significant problem.
The last Finnish tax-laws should be one of the best (lowest) for companies in EU.
But when big companies are just going to Bermuda and their business is something that has nothing to do with Bermuda…, that is a problem.
If all the tax-payers wuold also have an address in Bermuda, these CEO:s would shout sky-high when they could not get educated people anymore.
My relatives in Norrköking are all Swedes, born in Sweden etc.
I think their name is Johansson, but do not know so much about my cousins. I met them last, and first, time in 1964.
Anyhow. If someone wants pictures of good furniture for a home-office, I can send. Just E-mail me.
I will make the prototypes in February. Then You get also the exact measures. The description is btw. in Swedish.
Henry