7 ms·
Nice trivia: he actually started with delivering self-made furniture on his bike in his local town.
by 5_minutes 9y ago
Nice trivia: he actually started with delivering self-made furniture on his bike in his local town.
- jacquesm 9y agoI'll bet that was the highest quality stuff Ikea ever produced. I was in a store for recycled stuff a week ago or so looking for a typewriter and some old comic books for my kids and it struck me that none of the furniture they was made by Ikea. That translates into there being a direct path to the landfill from Ikea.
- Emouri 9y agoI've still got an Ikea table my in-laws bought in the early 70s, it'll last another 30 years no problem. Some of it wasn't so bad.
- jacquesm 9y agoStuff from that era was really good. High quality woods and good finishing work. Then it went downhill with the low point somewhere around '97 or so and since then it has been slowly climbing back up. But there is a long way to go if they ever want to get back to their old quality level and their profit margins would likely suffer as a consequence.
- kalleboo 9y ago> their profit margins would likely suffer as a consequence They would certainly have to raise prices if they raised the quality, and then they lose their customers to competitors who are cheaper (and even worse quality - have you ever tried the cheap furniture from a hardware store?) Furniture is a competitive market, and IKEA are very aggressive at undercutting their competition (they have directives to never let their competitors be cheaper) and they manage to sustain profits though their scale of operations (and some good engineering - IKEA have hollow tables filled with cardboard that's more durable than some competitors solid MDF stuff). Basically people aren't willing to pay for quality. IKEAs trick is to be both cheap and have an acceptable level of design and quality.
- edraferi 9y agoIKEA has several price/quality options. I’ve shopped there for a long time and slowly moved up the product line. Their breadth makes it hard to compete with. On the low end, pretty much anything cheaper than IKEAs entry level is total garbage. I’m looking at you Target! That stuff is little better than a cardboard box. On the high end, price rapidly outpaces quality. Every time I think “maybe I’ll get real furniture this time” the prices jump 10x. That’s just not worth it to me.
- Ma8ee 9y agoI agree. The jump to “real” furniture is ridiculous. Suddenly the dinner table cost $3000. And if you try to find something in between there are the stores whose main selling point seem to be that they aren’t IKEA. Their prices are double and the quality is worse than IKEA.
- woolvalley 9y agoReally? You can get some pretty decent solid wood stuff from places like CB2 in the $500-$1500 range for example: https://www.cb2.com/dining-tables/furniture/1 https://www.cb2.com/dining-tables/furniture/1 You can also order directly from places like etsy for other custom solid wood furniture around that price range: https://www.etsy.com/listing/268844007/mid-century-dining-table-modern-dining?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=dining%20table&ref=sr_gallery-1-11 https://www.etsy.com/listing/268844007/mid-century-dining-ta...
- Ma8ee 9y agoI’ve no direct experience with CB2, but my experience with furniture in that price range is that the quality usually is worse than IKEA. They might use mor expensive materials, but QA is usually bad.
- woolvalley 9y agoSo far the quality has been better than ikea for me. CB2 is crate and barrel's 'urban' division.
- sitkack 9y agoIkea has optimized the price and durability of an item to maximize utility for both the end user and the corp. People like getting new stuff for cheap and dont value resale or reuse. Ikea is an excellent machine for turning Borneo rain forest into landfill at the lowest price.
- kalleboo 9y ago> Borneo rain forest Most of IKEAs wood comes from Europe/Russia. They also probably do a lot more work tracing the source of their wood and making it sustainable than your average furniture maker, simply due to their visibility. You might be better off with something hand-crafted by an artisan from local wood, but who can afford that? Most people get their furniture from other big box stores, with unknown provenance
- dbrgn 9y agoIkea actually plans to become "forest positive": https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/ikea-sustainability-forest-positive-karelia https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/ikea-sustai... The article is from 2012, not sure how far they progressed (true sustainability is difficult). I doubt they use any tropical wood though. Most of their wood supplies are already FSC certified.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoAlso worth pointing out that in the UK, the company now sends nothing to landfill itself (http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38636272/ikea-sustainability-report-reveals-the-firm-sent-zero-waste-to-landfill-in-2016 http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/38636272/ikea-sustaina...). And in France, they will accept old Ikea furniture and resell it at low cost (https://www.climatesolutionsplatform.org/solution/giving-furniture-a-second-life-with-ikea/ https://www.climatesolutionsplatform.org/solution/giving-fur...) There are a few things to attack the company on; I’m not sure sustainability is one of their weak points.
- nicoburns 9y ago
- tjoff 9y agoYou obviously have never bought anything second hand. Ikea items are extremely popular and easy to sell used.
- jacquesm 9y agoI visit the local garbage drop off a couple of times per year and the amount of Ikea stuff that gets dumped there is depressing. If you actually read the comment above you'd see that I do buy stuff second hand.
- tjoff 9y agoMaybe that speaks more about the culture where you live rather than ikea? Your comment reads as if it was a new experience and that you've never tried ikea yourself.
- fermienrico 9y agoNo. Is it hard to see that IKEA furniture is not made to last? Doesn’t matter how many hands it changes - overall longevity is what determines its life.
- tjoff 9y agoIkea design is generally excellent and the quality per dollar is in a league of its own. That said, a $10 piece of furniture is not going to have $100 worth of materials... But ikea makes more expensive pieces as well. I don't think I've thrown away anything from ikea because it was end of life. (Part from <$1 kitchen peripherals).
- fermienrico 9y agoThe topic at hand is recyclability. You may have not throw things away but it is widely accepted and frankly utterly obvious - IKEA furniture has a short lifespan and it ends up being thrown away more according to the GP of this thread. You’re circling around the argument.
- kalleboo 9y agoI've sold a bunch of IKEA furniture second-hand the couple times I've moved and it all got offers within minutes of putting up the ad. Although I'm sure the low prices encourage people to just throw it away rather than bother trying to sell it.
- saddestcatever 9y agoSame here. Recently sold 3 MALM dressers on Craigslist when I moved out of my last apartment. Recovered a little over half their value. My current desk (MALM) was bought on Craiglist 4 years ago. Didn't have a car to get to IKEA. It's survived 4 years of use, and 3 moves.
- 5_minutes 9y agoMy take on this is that they make some real crappy stuff, like in: if you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away. And then they also have some decent, quality stuff, like some of their couches. The problem is that as a consumer, it’s sometimes a bit unclear which category you’re buying into. Price is not a good indicator when it comes to ikea stuff: they have cheap stuff that’s great and expensive stuff that’s dispensible.
- geezerjay 9y ago> you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away. I'm sure virtually no other piece of hone furniture was ever designed to be taken apart. Iikea's stuff is designed to be easily shipped and put together by unskilled people, but not to be taken apart. I'm sure that you won't rate your cellphone or laptop by how well it handles being disassembled.
- ryukafalz 9y ago>I'm sure that you won't rate your cellphone or laptop by how well it handles being disassembled. I do, personally - that's a pretty good proxy for how repairable/upgradeable it is. (But yes, it's much less often that I need to repair or upgrade my furniture. :P)
- ahartmetz 9y agoI have seen several over 100 years old wardrobes that can be disassembled and reassembled in minutes without damage because they are held together by metal fittings that hook into each other. Like the better Ikea stuff, but much sturdier, especially the actual metal fittings. The wardrobe I remember best had three doors - it would barely fit through any door if it couldn't be disassembled for transport. It had a socket part, separate wall parts with aforementioned fittings, and a top part that could be slotted onto the walls (and doors with their simple stick and hole type hinges) after assembling them. Assembly and disassembly was as simple as it sounds, if not simpler.
- ahartmetz 9y agoIkea has more and less cheap furniture. The longer life stuff is generally made of solid wood or plywood and its quality is just fine. Ikea never just throws a product together, which also applies to the cheap ones.
- loceng 9y agoEventually once we build the post-usefulness processing costs into products, we'll process/recycle everything fully as it should be instead of going to landfill; it's one of those Genuine Progress Index vs. GPD measurement things.
- kalleboo 9y agoI think landfilling is pretty rare in developed countries. Mostly only the US has enough cheap free space to do it. Most countries incinerate their garbage. Countries that used to mostly landfill like the UK are now moving more and more to incineration.
- jchw 9y agoActually the real reason people throw it away is because it's inexpensive. Is it worth selling my $20 Ikea table? In the grand scheme, probably not. It's not worth as much because it's not as expensive to begin with. Some of it is certainly crap but a lot of the tables and shelves and whatnot are quite nice, but it doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of money for it second hand.
- geezerjay 9y agoI agree. Ikea furniture is so cheap and readily available that reusing it after a renovation isn't exactly worth the trouble. I have an ikea table that is as new but I'm planning to either give it away or throw it in the trash because it's taking up space and cost abour 30€. Am I going to bother putting it on craigslist to recover 10 or 20€? It's not worth it.
- Scoundreller 9y agoSounds like the problem is the difficulty of posting on Craigslist and dealing with buyers, and not the item itself. It's an improvement though, when the threshold was putting a post in the newspaper, you probably wouldn't deal with it unless it was a 100 EUR return.
- vidarh 9y agoPut stuff in the front yard, and order a takeaway. I'm only slightly facetious - last few times I've planned to throw something away and had put it outside, a delivery person from somewhere or other asked if they could take it. Chances are there are plenty of people in lower income jobs that'd love taking it off your hands.
- mullen 9y agoWhat I notice with Ikea stuff is that you are more likely just to give it away. I was at a party a few years ago and the host said they were sick of a cheap Ikea table. I consulted the wife and we ended up taking it with us. I notice that people will give away the cheap stuff rather than trying to sell it. Still have the table BTW.
- philjohn 9y agoYou say that, but in two previous homes I've purchased, assembled and fitted IKEA kitchens - they were far better quality than other options in the same price range, and even held a candle to ones costing 2x as much. Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts, good quality hinges and handles - the cabinets themselves were just laminated chipboard, but unless you're spending £££ that's the same for most kitchen suppliers. Recently had a look at property listings, and both homes have been on the market recently, and both still have the kitchen I fitted 10 and 15 years ago, both still looking excellent. As with most brands, they sell cheap throwaway things as well as more expensive, but that means that people who need furniture but would otherwise not be able to afford anything (unless they got everything 2nd hand) can furnish a home.
- woolvalley 9y agoA good chunk of that wooden kitchen stuff that ikea sells is actually a thin layer of wood with an MDF core inside. For example: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70335212/ http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70335212/
- acdha 9y agoThey sell both but are good about clearly labeling things so you can know what you’re buying. This contrasts with some other manufacturers who bury it more.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts Easily fooled? No way that is solid oak. And for once that's a good thing, solid oak would warp, so you'd have to cross laminate it to counteract this. It's about 95% MDF with some veneer to make it look like wood. Yes it's heavy, but MDF is about as heavy as solid wood would be. The only way to get the kind of fit that makes it possible to assemble an IKEA product is to use what is called 'engineered' materials, a completely natural product would not work at that scale, there is just way too much variance. So even when IKEA does sell stuff that is made of wood throughout it will still be an engineered product. But the doors and drawer fronts of kitchen cabinets are not going to be cost effective that way so instead you get this MDF+surface coating solution, which for that application is ok. The easiest place to verify this is where the hinges embed in the doors and the boreholes for the drawer to frame connection, there you can easily see that it is not solid wood.
- evan_ 9y agoYou didn’t see anything from ikea because the ikea stuff got bought as soon as they put it on the floor.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]