Ikea is a well-known global retailer that sells everything and anything for your home at an affordable cost. They are a company based in Sweden, and they are taking over the world.
Sweden's billionaire Kamprad family are considering selling the Habitat furniture and design chain, whose sales have been hit by the economic downturn, the group's chief executive said on Sunday. Parent company ICAF Antillen, acting for the Kamprads, has launched a "strategic review" that "may or may not lead to a sale of the company," chief executive Mark Saunders said in a statement, confirming a London Sunday Times report. Founded by Sir Terence Conran in 1964, Habitat employs some 1,500... Read Full Story
If you’re one of the thousands of avid fans who read this blog religiously, you might recall that in the summer of 2008, Geoffrey and I took an urban field trip to the new Ikea in Redhook, Brooklyn, which opened that June, to provide residents of the NYC Metropolitan area with a warehouse-sized shopping facility at which to purchase cheap and interesting furniture. And very reasonably priced scented candles in reusable containers. And a lot of other cool stuff that you convince yourself... Read Full Story
The wholesome Scandinavian image of furniture and lifestyle giant Ikea has been rudely shaken by a new book which claims the company is hostile to foreign employees and uses Stasi-style secret police methods to spy on its thousands of staff worldwide. The explosive charges are made by a former senior Ikea executive Johan Stenebo, a Swede who started working for the company at one of its German outlets outside Hamburg over 20 years ago and rose to a senior management position. He resigned last... Read Full Story
Swedish flat-pack giant Ikea must cut more jobs than previously announced as the financial crisis continues to weigh on demand for its furniture, founder Ingvar Kamprad said Tuesday. Kamprad did not say exactly how many workers would be affected. In the past 10 months, Ikea has already slashed 5,000 jobs globally after sales dropped 7 percent below budget. "We need to reduce personnel further mainly within production and logistics," he told Swedish daily Dagens Industri. "It's about... Read Full Story
IKEA announced that is plans on pouring $77 million into “clean-technology start-ups” within the next few years and would also like to add “green” items such as solar panels to it stores, according to the Cleantech Group.
Another IKEA move planned for this fall will be to support sustainability by eliminating its checkout use of plastic bags. British customers have been charged for the use of these bags for about two years now. More than 380 billion plastic bags are estimated to be trashed... Read Full Story
(before)
I’ll tell you this for free: you just haven’t lived till you’ve visited the Ikea in Thurrock, Essex during school half-term. For those of you not in the know , this is the Ikea located at the (in)famous Lakeside Shopping Centre , a large American-style shopping mall full of the usual retail chains with the requisite disgusting food court and the requisite annoying crowds of shoppers dragging their screaming and bawling children behind them. Lakeside even has a West Ham shop (no... Read Full Story
Written by Mac Carey
So, just how popular is IKEA? It’s estimated that 10% of living Europeans were conceived on an IKEA-produced bed. It’s time you learned a little more about the company, its reclusive owner Ingvar Kamprad (who may or may not be worth more than Bill Gates), and his continuing quest to install flat pack, streamlined fixtures across the seven continents.
1. It All Started With a Car
The inspiration for IKEA’s design philosophy came when taking the legs off of a chair... Read Full Story
(before)
I’ll tell you this for free: you just haven’t lived till you’ve visited the Ikea in Thurrock, Essex during school half-term. For those of you not in the know , this is the Ikea located at the (in)famous Lakeside Shopping Centre , a large American-style shopping mall full of the usual retail chains with the requisite disgusting food court and the requisite annoying crowds of shoppers dragging their screaming and bawling children behind them. Lakeside even has a West Ham shop (no... Read Full Story
Ikea, the low-cost Swedish retailer that has furnished millions of homes around the globe, moved into the world of fine art with a Stockholm museum's retrospective of its 50 years of liveable design. From the first flat-pack table in the 1950s to the latest trendy home styles, the exhibition now showing at the captial's contemporary art museum Liljevalchs Konsthall traces a half-century of history as seen through Ikea's eyes. "This is not a conventional design exhibition. It's more an... Read Full Story
I have always subscribed to the philosophy that creativity is far more valuable that dollars when it comes to decorating. It’s not that dollars don’t help, but someone decorating on a budget with a lot of creativity is going to have much better success than someone without a budget without creativity. Except that maybe they can pay someone creative to do the decorating for them… Either way, I have found that some of the best solutions I have found to problems (decorating or not) have been in... Read Full Story
