I used to think IKEA was insane for running such a "20th Century" business model for shipping their products. The fact that you cannot purchase anything from IK

I used to think IKEA was insane for running such a "20th Century" business model for shipping their products. The fact that you cannot purchase anything from IKEA's website and have it delivered without incurring a $129 delivery fee is crazy when taken at face value. However, I've come to understand why they have limited their delivery service. Their flat pack products are their profit centers and the packaging that makes them so efficient to store in their storefront warehouses is simply not suited for shipping via 3rd parties (UPS, FedEx, etc). As an extreme example, consider their cardboard honeycomb + laminate furniture (the Hemnes stuff). It takes almost nothing to punch through the flat surfaces of those products if the force is concentrated on a small area and the box offers zero protection (padding) to prevent this. Even the higher end products are packaged as tightly as possible with sensitive surfaces directly touching the box they're packed in. While it's insane to charge $129 for get a pack of their excellently priced "ancillary" products shipped (kitchen utensils, cheap LED lightbulbs), those products are priced desirably in order to get you in the store. If IKEA sold those online with a modern shipping model, they'd forgo the chance of getting you to buy something that is actually profitable. IKEA can't redesign the packaging for their flat pack products without impacting the efficiency of their in-store inventory and they can't ship their existing packages without ironclad damage-free guarantees from the big logistics companies. Even if they get a guarantee that the logistics company eats the cost of any damaged good, it would still negatively impact customer satisfaction when, for example, the bed they ordered for their new house shows up damaged and needs to be returned/reordered. Every time I've bought IKEA furniture, it's been for an immediate need, and I'm not going to be happy when I have nowhere to sit for 2-5 days because UPS crushed my package.