I think Ikea has a quite different image in the US and in parts of Asia, where it's considered a hip, quite desirable brand. It's not necessarily so that the p

I think Ikea has a quite different image in the US and in parts of Asia, where it's considered a hip, quite desirable brand. It's not necessarily so that the poor shop in European Ikea. But throughout most of Europe it's not considered specifically hip, or upscale. That's probably based on it's history. It's not that long ago that Ikea seriously started to work on design. Most of the fare they had like 20 years ago can charitably be described as "rustic". It also got a lot easier to build the furniture as compared to a couple decades ago, where you always had either spare -, or not enough screws.