Yeah, I was totally guessing with the Swedish spelling. Not my first language.
Seriously though, IKEA has a lot of great products. Everything in my room except my big brass bed is from IKEA. I started shopping there six years ago, and all five pieces of furniture (a FJORD dresser and nighttable, two BILLY bookshelves, and a BABORD shoe organizer) are still kicking it. Since we have a great employee purchase program, I’ve spent nearly $1000 redecorating. It’s great because it’s so cheap that you can switch things about and redecorate easily.
Okay, I felt like I had to defend IKEA. Carry on, carry on.
I already feel insulted by the attempts to construct pseudo-Swedish words using non-Swedish characters, like Ø instead of Ö.
[slight hijack]
Talking about Kungens Kurva (the king’s curve in Swedish). For some reason the name is very popular among East Europeans (maybe because kurva means whore in many Slavic languages.
[/slight hijack]
I live in a small space and the only area available to me for a home office was a 5X6 foot cubbyhole with three doors leading off it. The usable space along the single doorless wall was only a foot deep, and I despaired of finding anything I could concievably use as a desk, that would have adequate storage for all my files and stuff.
I ended up building it myself out of Ikea’s MOPPE storage boxes and carpenter’s glue. The drawers are just the right size and shape for all my papers.
IKEA is also where I got the neat planet, stars, and spaceship mobile that hangs over the said desk.
If you’re comparing it to low quality doug fir construction plywood you may have a point but for cabinetry I stick with baltic birch, vastly superior to MDF and quite cost effective.
Hi, this is Elvis’s shopping partner. I love IKEA and I have been putting suggestions into every IKEA suggestion box at every IKEA I have been to {Three countries, so far, six stores} that they build one here in the Boston area. I like the size of the furniture as our home can only be described as “quaint” {read: small} and things from IKEA fit better. They usually have just what I need and I forget about the rest. I have never eaten one of their meatballs, however. Maybe when I get my own IKEA here…
Uniquely designed eating utensil, featuring both tines and bowl. Versatile enough for soups and stews. Attractive white plastic, compatable with most tableware patterns. Not dishwasher safe. $2.99 for 8 settings.
They’re being discontinued shortly - right now we’re recieving our last quantities from the Jersey terminal. But I agree that they are wonderful. I bought like ten of them and hand-painted them in fun, swirly, bright designs and gave them away as presents last year. Hours of crafting fun (and don’t even get me started on the BAS three-dimentional boxes!) The MOPPE is being replaced by MACKIS, which is finished and has a metal label holder and thus costs a lot more. MOPPE is much more fun.
They’re working on this. It’s not a well-known fact, but it wasn’t until 1993 (I believe the first US IKEA was built in '85) that we turned a profit in the US. A big part was adjusting our products (for a while, we sold European-sized beds that needed oddly sized sheets and such). But they were slow to expand because of this loss - they didn’t want to invest too much if IKEA failed here. When they started expanding after that, the concentration was on the West Coast, since Californians did a lot more ordering from our catalog.
But they are currently planning on expanding and expanding some more. I think a store in Florida is scheduled in '03; I’ll check the website tomorrow at work to see about Boston. They are also spending a lot of money on expanding select stores like mine to full stores, and we have a huge and super-expensixe remodel planned starting with the new year.
I told my co-worker Louis about this thread; he suggests that instead of everyone dissing IKEA because it’s a trendy social thing to do, everyone should be discussing the fact that one of the richest men in the world doesn’t pay us a living wage.
No fake IKEA product name could possibly top the actual product name GÖÖNK, a freaky-looking stuffed animal they were selling for a while.
By the way, come December, if the food shop section of your local IKEA sells the pepper cookie dough, flodnak sez get some. It’s yummy. Of course it’s best if you roll it out and bake it according to the instructions, but it’s damn good by the spoonful too.
Hehe. That reminds me of “Fight Club”. Remember the scene where Ed Norton is going round his flat and all the furniture appears as if in the IKEA catalogue? IIRC on one of the DVD special features the director (or someone) mentioned that they were going for an IKEA, Swedish flat-packed furniture feel. Thus, when they gave the imaginary store’s imaginary catalogue a name (at the end of the scene), they had to use a “strange” character to make it look foreign. IIRC they used the highly Swedish Ü
Dude, he is so rich. I read the quote somewhere in our monthly Co-Worker Newspaper. He makes billions of dollars a year, and I make below the poverty line. Damn business acumen.
Still selling them at my store. They are definitely ugly little toys - like a stuffed ball with a monster face on it.
