11 ms·

I am genuinely upset about this. I have such fond memories of thumbing through endlessly as a teenager and dreaming of having my own spaces that were so wonderf

I am genuinely upset about this. I have such fond memories of thumbing through endlessly as a teenager and dreaming of having my own spaces that were so wonderfully busy and eclectic. My wife and I were just at IKEA last week picking up a new bed for our growing toddler, I glanced at the catalogs as we passed and decided against picking one up. I hope I can still get my hands on a couple old copies to keep on my bookshelf. Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history.

m463 6y ago
I think they're giving up the long game. maybe kids now are doing it online?
- agumonkey 6y ago
  I'd bet a few dollars that for kids this generation everything virtual/AR is baseline.
  - darcien 6y ago
    Oh, that actually sounds like a cool idea for an AR app. Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head. And if IKEA were to do it, they can just add shopping feature so the customer could purchase the furniture after trying it out inside their own room. That totally sounds like a killer app! I wonder if there's anything like that already on the market.
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      Geomagical are doing that: https://geomagical.com/ https://geomagical.com/
    - Tomte 6y ago
      > Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head. It exists. The IKEA Smart app (from IKEA itself).
    - Clewza313 6y ago
      IKEA has already built & launched that, it's called IKEA Place: https://www.ikea.com/au/en/customer-service/mobile-apps/say-hej-to-ikea-place-pub1f8af050 https://www.ikea.com/au/en/customer-service/mobile-apps/say-... iOS only though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498
      - darcien 6y ago
        Wow, I didn't know that was a thing, thanks for sharing it!
    - dagw 6y ago
      Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue I don't know if they made it generally available, but I know IKEA made a demo/beta app that did just that.
  - numpad0 6y ago
    What I’d rather bet is that in-discoverability is lucrative because it helps customers attach to products.
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      By in-discoverability you mean interacting with furniture through phones ? Could be. The old catalog was a powerful dream machine though.. now in terms of sales it might be much. Time will tell.
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    That was certainly the bet about a decade or two ago in many industries. Now, over the past 5 years or so we're seeing online tech magazines move into print[0], record labels racing to get back up to speed for vinyl printing[1], and "lo-fi" looks and sounds and devices taking up a larger and larger space in pop culture[2]. If anything, I get the sense that the younger generations are seeing the value in attention and peace, and are moving in directions that afford them more of that—or at least control over that in their own lives and thoughts. The general attitude, at least as far as I've discerned from my own observations, has been that "everything has it's optimal place" rather than adopting one tech to rule them all. [0] https://store.increment.com https://store.increment.com [1] https://longlivevinyl.net/2018/07/30/pressing-concerns-the-new-breed-of-vinyl-pressing-plant/ https://longlivevinyl.net/2018/07/30/pressing-concerns-the-n... [2] I don't have a nice summary for this one. It's just everywhere I look. As with most things, I gather humanity is continually optimizing for itself. And what that looks like is what most gamblers usually get wrong because our foresight is often just that limited—especially when the result is going back to something most people thought we were done with. We are just a bunch of monkeys acting strangely, after all.
    - lupire 6y ago
      Retro always has a hipster niche. But it's not mainstream majority.
      - 52-6F-62 6y ago
        The article on vinyl production points at a market much larger than a "hipster niche"—it's the very source of the production issues they faced: the resurgent market was much larger than any company in the industry predicted. It's not about "retro", it's about ephemera and ritual and appreciation. Certainly, dedicated fans of music exist in all aspects of human culture and not just western ...hipsterdom.
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      I saw this a little ago and even though it's true that old ways have value, even in smartphone AR/VR era, I also have a feel that this revival was more or less a dead cat bounce and not something that will grow much more. Kids today live in the era of real time video + AR filters.. there's a chance that this represent their magic / zeitgeist.
- Tomte 6y ago
  I am generally familiar with IKEA's offerings, but I have a hard time finding anything in the app. On the web site it's nearly impossible. Unless you know the name, then search works (as long as you're willing to scroll through 150 totally different items with that name).
  - kungito 6y ago
    All my local furniture shops, including Ikea, have horrible, horrible experience. And it's the same for other shops. It's practically impossible to know all of the following: * is everything in the picture included * what are all the possible exterior dimensions of the product * what are the specifications of the products down to all the specifications which make you choose one product over another The saddest part is, lately it's been impossible to find this data on the manufacturers website as well. Basic things like how many nits does the TV have, how big does the front panel need to be for the dishwasher etc.
  - aequitas 6y ago
    I found for a lot of websites that Google image search works a lot better and quicker to find what you are looking for then the site's own search page.
    - kristofferR 6y ago
      Not for IKEA, they cancel products all the time. Discovering an IKEA product you really want and then discovering that it's not available anymore is a really shitty feeling.
      - schrijver 6y ago
        Slightly shitty feeling? Anyway, the popularity of IKEA makes it that you can search second hand websites by the name of the furniture and have a decent chance of finding it. Would be surprised though if IKEA has a higher turnover of furniture models than other shops because selling furniture depends on creating & following trends & fashions and that’s the same for any brand (although some brands have their ‘classics’ that they keep selling for a long long time, like IKEA does).
- rchaud 6y ago
  IKEA's website is awful. Just as an example, here's something that was happening for months, before they fixed it late last year: When you login, there are two types of accounts you can log into. Ikea and Ikea Family. These are shown as tabs, and the tab labels are faint. The login screen defaulted to the Ikea Family, so my individual login never worked, again because the labeling wasn't clear. It wasn't until I was ready to reset my pw that I carefully looked at every screen element and noticed the tabs.
1234throwaway 6y ago
your life experience is derived from a commercial furniture shop that sells homogenous timber-plastic furniture. maybe you should stop thinking about ikea
- bloqs 6y ago
  Childhood memories are not dirtied by ideological or poltitical bias. They are pure unadulterated observation. A beautiful thing.
  - Andrex 6y ago
    Not necessarily worthy of reverence, though.
DonHopkins 6y ago
I bet the cover and all the pages are shipped in a flat pack, and you have to bind them yourself with the included binders and binding tool.
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  That's just silly. You screw the pages into the spine with a little allen key they give you.
  - DonHopkins 6y ago
    Hopefully they don't use VeloBind 11 prong binding strips, but then only include 10 prongs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeloBind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeloBind >It is possible to take a soft covered Velo-bound book, remove the old binding and cover, and re-bind it with a hard cover, which may be pre-embossed for more a more impressive appearance. This rapid up-grade was the cause of the short-lived motto "Soft to hard in 30 seconds!" That was first done when the firm was located in Sunnyvale, California.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    I went and bought one of these allen keys to disassemble a well worn piece of Ikea furniture, only to unzip the back of the chair during disassembly, to find the allen wrench. Spent a good half hour looking for the manual online, only to remember Ikea manuals are all pictures. I found the manual and was reminded of this. About to give up, I took a risk, and thankfully bought the right sized key. Allen wrenches are made in both Imperial and Metric scales; Ikea, being Swedish, meant correctly picking metric. I later looked through the manual, and on the 2nd to last page, it documented the correct key size.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  Instructions unclear, every page is upside down!
- Akronymus 6y ago
  The flat packages from ikea are so amazing to me. Pretty sure no other furniture company has any that are nearly as compact.
heterodyning 6y ago
I am upset too
kleiba 6y ago
You just described the reason for IKEA's decision: - "memories" - "as a teenager" - "decided against picking one up"
- GuB-42 6y ago
  That should be the opposite. GP has fond memories of a commercial brand, for a company, that should be priceless. He even intend to keep a catalog on his bookshelf, his kid will grow with an IKEA ad, for a company, that should be priceless. Except that there is no such thing as "priceless" for a company. And they probably put a price tag on that, and decided that the "childhood memories" value is not worth the costs.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    What you describe might well be a good reason for them to reprint a limited run of - maybe an older version - of the catalogue and sell them as mementos or put scanned versions online. E.g. old Argos catalogs are available here [1]. Not so much for continuing to print new ones. [1] https://retromash.com/argos/ https://retromash.com/argos/
    - robin_reala 6y ago
      The scanned versions are online: https://ikeamuseum.com/en/our-catalogues/ https://ikeamuseum.com/en/our-catalogues/ (the certificate has expired today; I’m trying to find who to alert about that)
      - pessimizer 6y ago
        Also: https://archive.org/details/ikea-museum-catalogues/IKEA%20Museum%20-%20sv-1950 https://archive.org/details/ikea-museum-catalogues/IKEA%20Mu...
    - iso1631 6y ago
      My kids (8 + 6) have poured through argos catalogues their whole lives thinking about toys. Rather than using that as a springboard into the app (quick QR code) where you can then click and deliver with your sainsburys order, Argos seems to be in a managed decline, getting rid of everything that differentiates it from competitors.
retSava 6y ago
> Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history. He. I had a bout where I spent waaaaay too much time and effort hunting down the precise same variant of the Risk board game that I had as a kid, only to not play it once since I got it. The old edition I looked for had star-shaped playthings instead of the symbolic cannons etc that are used now. Now I just have to find Drakborgen (re-release of the 1985 edition kickstarter here, apparently :) : [0]) and Battle cars [1]. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandrake/drakborgen https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandrake/drakborgen [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2368/battlecars https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2368/battlecars
paxys 6y ago
Why are you upset with their decision if you yourself (a self described fan of them) didn't bother to pick one up?
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Seriously. Reminds me of those local news segments of old restaurants closing down and everyone being interviewed are sad and are reminiscing about when they used to go to it "as a kid".
rospaya 6y ago
I'm not anywhere near upset but I loved going through IKEA and Sony catalogs in the 90s. It was aspirational since the nearest IKEA was two countries away and represented something modern and more progressive than the furniture we could buy. Most of the Sony catalog was equipment I didn't need or could afford, except Walkmans or various headphones. It's just nostalgia and consumerism I guess.

m463 6y ago

I think they're giving up the long game. maybe kids now are doing it online?

agumonkey 6y ago
I'd bet a few dollars that for kids this generation everything virtual/AR is baseline.
- darcien 6y ago
  Oh, that actually sounds like a cool idea for an AR app. Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head. And if IKEA were to do it, they can just add shopping feature so the customer could purchase the furniture after trying it out inside their own room. That totally sounds like a killer app! I wonder if there's anything like that already on the market.
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    Geomagical are doing that: https://geomagical.com/ https://geomagical.com/
  - Tomte 6y ago
    > Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head. It exists. The IKEA Smart app (from IKEA itself).
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    IKEA has already built & launched that, it's called IKEA Place: https://www.ikea.com/au/en/customer-service/mobile-apps/say-hej-to-ikea-place-pub1f8af050 https://www.ikea.com/au/en/customer-service/mobile-apps/say-... iOS only though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498
    - darcien 6y ago
      Wow, I didn't know that was a thing, thanks for sharing it!
  - dagw 6y ago
    Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue I don't know if they made it generally available, but I know IKEA made a demo/beta app that did just that.
- numpad0 6y ago
  What I’d rather bet is that in-discoverability is lucrative because it helps customers attach to products.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    By in-discoverability you mean interacting with furniture through phones ? Could be. The old catalog was a powerful dream machine though.. now in terms of sales it might be much. Time will tell.
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  That was certainly the bet about a decade or two ago in many industries. Now, over the past 5 years or so we're seeing online tech magazines move into print[0], record labels racing to get back up to speed for vinyl printing[1], and "lo-fi" looks and sounds and devices taking up a larger and larger space in pop culture[2]. If anything, I get the sense that the younger generations are seeing the value in attention and peace, and are moving in directions that afford them more of that—or at least control over that in their own lives and thoughts. The general attitude, at least as far as I've discerned from my own observations, has been that "everything has it's optimal place" rather than adopting one tech to rule them all. [0] https://store.increment.com https://store.increment.com [1] https://longlivevinyl.net/2018/07/30/pressing-concerns-the-new-breed-of-vinyl-pressing-plant/ https://longlivevinyl.net/2018/07/30/pressing-concerns-the-n... [2] I don't have a nice summary for this one. It's just everywhere I look. As with most things, I gather humanity is continually optimizing for itself. And what that looks like is what most gamblers usually get wrong because our foresight is often just that limited—especially when the result is going back to something most people thought we were done with. We are just a bunch of monkeys acting strangely, after all.
  - lupire 6y ago
    Retro always has a hipster niche. But it's not mainstream majority.
    - 52-6F-62 6y ago
      The article on vinyl production points at a market much larger than a "hipster niche"—it's the very source of the production issues they faced: the resurgent market was much larger than any company in the industry predicted. It's not about "retro", it's about ephemera and ritual and appreciation. Certainly, dedicated fans of music exist in all aspects of human culture and not just western ...hipsterdom.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    I saw this a little ago and even though it's true that old ways have value, even in smartphone AR/VR era, I also have a feel that this revival was more or less a dead cat bounce and not something that will grow much more. Kids today live in the era of real time video + AR filters.. there's a chance that this represent their magic / zeitgeist.
Tomte 6y ago
I am generally familiar with IKEA's offerings, but I have a hard time finding anything in the app. On the web site it's nearly impossible. Unless you know the name, then search works (as long as you're willing to scroll through 150 totally different items with that name).
- kungito 6y ago
  All my local furniture shops, including Ikea, have horrible, horrible experience. And it's the same for other shops. It's practically impossible to know all of the following: * is everything in the picture included * what are all the possible exterior dimensions of the product * what are the specifications of the products down to all the specifications which make you choose one product over another The saddest part is, lately it's been impossible to find this data on the manufacturers website as well. Basic things like how many nits does the TV have, how big does the front panel need to be for the dishwasher etc.
- aequitas 6y ago
  I found for a lot of websites that Google image search works a lot better and quicker to find what you are looking for then the site's own search page.
  - kristofferR 6y ago
    Not for IKEA, they cancel products all the time. Discovering an IKEA product you really want and then discovering that it's not available anymore is a really shitty feeling.
    - schrijver 6y ago
      Slightly shitty feeling? Anyway, the popularity of IKEA makes it that you can search second hand websites by the name of the furniture and have a decent chance of finding it. Would be surprised though if IKEA has a higher turnover of furniture models than other shops because selling furniture depends on creating & following trends & fashions and that’s the same for any brand (although some brands have their ‘classics’ that they keep selling for a long long time, like IKEA does).
rchaud 6y ago
IKEA's website is awful. Just as an example, here's something that was happening for months, before they fixed it late last year: When you login, there are two types of accounts you can log into. Ikea and Ikea Family. These are shown as tabs, and the tab labels are faint. The login screen defaulted to the Ikea Family, so my individual login never worked, again because the labeling wasn't clear. It wasn't until I was ready to reset my pw that I carefully looked at every screen element and noticed the tabs.

1234throwaway 6y ago

your life experience is derived from a commercial furniture shop that sells homogenous timber-plastic furniture. maybe you should stop thinking about ikea

bloqs 6y ago
Childhood memories are not dirtied by ideological or poltitical bias. They are pure unadulterated observation. A beautiful thing.
- Andrex 6y ago
  Not necessarily worthy of reverence, though.

DonHopkins 6y ago

I bet the cover and all the pages are shipped in a flat pack, and you have to bind them yourself with the included binders and binding tool.

scoopertrooper 6y ago
That's just silly. You screw the pages into the spine with a little allen key they give you.
- DonHopkins 6y ago
  Hopefully they don't use VeloBind 11 prong binding strips, but then only include 10 prongs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeloBind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeloBind >It is possible to take a soft covered Velo-bound book, remove the old binding and cover, and re-bind it with a hard cover, which may be pre-embossed for more a more impressive appearance. This rapid up-grade was the cause of the short-lived motto "Soft to hard in 30 seconds!" That was first done when the firm was located in Sunnyvale, California.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  I went and bought one of these allen keys to disassemble a well worn piece of Ikea furniture, only to unzip the back of the chair during disassembly, to find the allen wrench. Spent a good half hour looking for the manual online, only to remember Ikea manuals are all pictures. I found the manual and was reminded of this. About to give up, I took a risk, and thankfully bought the right sized key. Allen wrenches are made in both Imperial and Metric scales; Ikea, being Swedish, meant correctly picking metric. I later looked through the manual, and on the 2nd to last page, it documented the correct key size.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Instructions unclear, every page is upside down!
Akronymus 6y ago
The flat packages from ikea are so amazing to me. Pretty sure no other furniture company has any that are nearly as compact.

heterodyning 6y ago

I am upset too

kleiba 6y ago

You just described the reason for IKEA's decision: - "memories" - "as a teenager" - "decided against picking one up"

GuB-42 6y ago
That should be the opposite. GP has fond memories of a commercial brand, for a company, that should be priceless. He even intend to keep a catalog on his bookshelf, his kid will grow with an IKEA ad, for a company, that should be priceless. Except that there is no such thing as "priceless" for a company. And they probably put a price tag on that, and decided that the "childhood memories" value is not worth the costs.
- vidarh 6y ago
  What you describe might well be a good reason for them to reprint a limited run of - maybe an older version - of the catalogue and sell them as mementos or put scanned versions online. E.g. old Argos catalogs are available here [1]. Not so much for continuing to print new ones. [1] https://retromash.com/argos/ https://retromash.com/argos/
  - robin_reala 6y ago
    The scanned versions are online: https://ikeamuseum.com/en/our-catalogues/ https://ikeamuseum.com/en/our-catalogues/ (the certificate has expired today; I’m trying to find who to alert about that)
    - pessimizer 6y ago
      Also: https://archive.org/details/ikea-museum-catalogues/IKEA%20Museum%20-%20sv-1950 https://archive.org/details/ikea-museum-catalogues/IKEA%20Mu...
  - iso1631 6y ago
    My kids (8 + 6) have poured through argos catalogues their whole lives thinking about toys. Rather than using that as a springboard into the app (quick QR code) where you can then click and deliver with your sainsburys order, Argos seems to be in a managed decline, getting rid of everything that differentiates it from competitors.

retSava 6y ago

> Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history. He. I had a bout where I spent waaaaay too much time and effort hunting down the precise same variant of the Risk board game that I had as a kid, only to not play it once since I got it. The old edition I looked for had star-shaped playthings instead of the symbolic cannons etc that are used now. Now I just have to find Drakborgen (re-release of the 1985 edition kickstarter here, apparently :) : [0]) and Battle cars [1]. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandrake/drakborgen https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandrake/drakborgen [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2368/battlecars https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2368/battlecars

paxys 6y ago

Why are you upset with their decision if you yourself (a self described fan of them) didn't bother to pick one up?

Dirlewanger 6y ago
Seriously. Reminds me of those local news segments of old restaurants closing down and everyone being interviewed are sad and are reminiscing about when they used to go to it "as a kid".

rospaya 6y ago

I'm not anywhere near upset but I loved going through IKEA and Sony catalogs in the 90s. It was aspirational since the nearest IKEA was two countries away and represented something modern and more progressive than the furniture we could buy. Most of the Sony catalog was equipment I didn't need or could afford, except Walkmans or various headphones. It's just nostalgia and consumerism I guess.