I visited an IKEA store for the first time 2 days ago. It was fascinating experience. Before, I only knew of IKEA abstractly from the jokes & memes about the

I visited an IKEA store for the first time 2 days ago. It was fascinating experience. Before, I only knew of IKEA abstractly from the jokes & memes about their furniture being impossible to assemble. Actually walking through the place was extremely interesting. Observations... - it was the busiest furniture store I've ever been in for a non-holiday shopping day. I've never seen a Rooms-to-Go that busy. - the walkways are deliberately zig-zagged in serpentine fashion around the showroom. I likened it to museum exhibits (especially traveling exhibits) or Disney venues that move people through a space in sequential fashion. For people already familiar with showroom, they can go through the shortcut doors in the middle of room. Even little things like the arrows on the ground were unique; instead of being painted on or vinyl adhesive, the arrows are actually lit from cans above your head. - the Ikea restaurant was actually full. Costco would be another rare example of the food court being full. Most restaurants in retail stores are usually empty and a mind-boggling waste of floor space. E.g. the restaurants inside Fry's Electronics and Macy's department store are always empty; you also knew Borders bookstore was dying when you saw nobody sitting in the store's coffee shop. - the housewares seem to be a good value. E.g. The 1-quart hermetic jars at ContainerStore were $6.99 but the equivalent at Ikea was $2.99.[1][2] I chuckled when I noticed that even the jars were do-it-yourself: you had to install the rubber ring on the lid! I think lots of customers would be willing to do that to save $4.00. I bought most of my furniture many years ago from Ethan Allen but I walked away from Ikea totally impressed their retail concept and presentation. They hit the sweet spot combination of aesthetics + DIY + price. As for the article, I noticed that many hobbies (e.g. sewing and crafting) have converged on Ikea as the common-denominator for organization. The analogy of Ikea carcasses as a "platform" makes perfect sense. E.g. there's a company that makes storage displays to subdivide the Ikea cubes.[3] Ikea is the closest thing in the furniture industry to have "standardized pieces" for others to build on. Ikea is not the only place to buy DIY ready-to-assembly furniture. Home Depot, Lowes, and Office Depot have particle board cubes as well. The difference is that IKEA is very standardized with long-running product lines (more than a decade). You can build out in incremental steps as the budget allows. You can buy one cube or drawer cabinet from Ikea and 5 years later, you add another cube that matches. Home Depot and Lowes will have "flavor-of-the-month" storage products from different vendors depending on whatever contracts were favorable at the time. [1] https://www.containerstore.com/s/kilner-round-hermetic-glass-jars/d?productId=10036769 https://www.containerstore.com/s/kilner-round-hermetic-glass... [2] http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90227985/ http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/90227985/ [3] https://www.stampnstorage.com/storage-for-ikea/?sort=pricedesc https://www.stampnstorage.com/storage-for-ikea/?sort=pricede...