4 ms·

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.
      • vidarh 6y ago
        Argos sales have been stable at around 4bn gbp a year in recent years as far as I can tell, but finally reported substantial growth after lockdown shifted most of their sales online. I'm not convinced holding on to their catalog as long as they did has done them any favours.
        • iso1631 6y ago
          The growth seen in the area has gone almost entirely to amazon
          • vidarh 6y ago
            The growth I referred to was explicitly Argos, which has seen consistent growth through all of 2020, with Nov/Dec being 8% up year over year. 8% isn't huge, but it contributed to the majority of Sainsbury's overall growth in the period, and it's a massive turnaround for Argos given it's revenues have basically stayed about the same level for a decade.
            • iso1631 6y ago
              Online sales as a percentage of all retail sales in the UK have been steadily increasing by about 2pp per year for the last decade until 2019 [0] In 2020 this increased from 19% to 28%, from £76b to £99b [1] For Argos sales to only be up 8% in 2020, or £320m, isn't good, it took just 1.3% of the extra online sales. Remember also that Argos (on the whole) remained open for collection during the lockdowns inside of Sainsburys. [0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindustry/timeseries/j4mc/drsi https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindust... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/315506/online-retail-sales-in-the-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/315506/online-retail-sal...