I love me some IKEA. We used to have these rickety, I'll say, "untrustworthy" bookshelves that would kind of lean one way or the other. We'd put the heavy books on the bottom and hope they'd hold the whole thing in place, like paper and ink anchors in an uneven sea.
Now we have Expedit. A beautifully simple cube-shaped bookshelf unit made up of smaller cube spaces. Solid as a bank vault. Inexpensive ($159 last year, $99 this year!). Easily assembled, even by kinesthetically dyslexic me. Versatile in design, some cubes hold books while others get art or flowers. And, that's only our most recent IKEA acquisition.
That we have so many IKEA furnishings and objects in our home led me to wonder recently about IKEA as a company. Are they as eco-friendly as they claim? Why the big blue box stores? What's up with those crazy-cool Swedish product names? Why would my Mom think avoid it, thinking it a high-end mega-expensive store, while some of my friends avoid it because of it's rep as a super-cheap-only-undergrads-on-tight-budgets shop-there store?
As for me, well, I'm a little like the guy in that movie who...you'll see if you scroll below the fold.
For now, it's Tuesday morning and I've learned some things this week. Have you?
The Claim
As a company we're always looking at new ways of working, new ways of being a better retailer and new ways of ensuring that our impact on the environment, as a business, is as positive as possible.
-IKEA Website
Could such a claim be true? Could a store whose products I love so much be so good? This is like someone invented a hot fudge sauce that provided all my needed nutrients and cleaned my teeth for me, too. How could I not like this? But, there was that little voice in the back of my head, asking, "Can you believe this?" This diary is a non-exhaustive look at that question and the claims that lie behind it.
Most of the sources are from IKEA sponsored websites, and those of their partners which include Greenpeace, UNICEF, and the WWF (also, Salmon Dialogue and Compassion in World Farming). Given the quality of that company, which has earned my respect and trust, this is not an investigative "uncover the dirt" piece, but a report of IKEA's story as IKEA and its partners tell it. I consciously chose not to do an Upton Sinclair type piece, but there is room for that in the comments, if you are so inclined. Please just adhere to the standards of discourse (courtesy, calm, open-mindedness, and no profanity) maintained by the Morning Feature community if you choose to go in that direction.
The Clip
When I first saw this sequence, I just thought, "Wow! That's a lot like me!" Now, I agree with Critical Commons (a really interesting website) which critiques it as a meta-statement on augmented reality, product placement advertising in film and tv, and the commercialization of identity.
As Stephen Colbert would say, "IIKKEEEAAAAAA!!!!"
The Culture
Whatever your relationship to IKEA furniture and objects for the home, if you've heard of IKEA, you're probably aware that it occupies a unique niche in the home furnishings marketplace. It's showrooms are legendary, and legendarily large, for being complete open-floorplan homes, showing customers how the products look and behave in a real living room, or bathroom, or kitchen. This is akin to a sport in Paramus, NJ, the closest IKEA to the North Bronx, where exhibits include those titled, "Living in 450 sq. feet" and "The One-Bedroom Mansion" where you can see how expert designers align and arrange IKEA everything to create comfortable, even spacious living, in such close quarters. (Hint: vertical space, vertical space, vertical space.)
Except these rooms are not really homes or apartments, but something like museum exhibits that run maze-like through a series of showrooms littered with impulse buys and store codes for calling up larger items in the warehouse on the 1st floor.
There's just something about IKEA that fires up the imagination, and it's no wonder that so many reality design shows feature IKEA products nearly as much as that clip from Fight Club. If a cable show is about organizing, trading spaces, decorating, or designing, it has most likely featured items from IKEA, and probably several of them in each episode.
But, the fun is not just for Ed Norton and Ty Pennington. Follow these links to the cultural zeitgeist that is IKEA:
- IKEAfans Where the release of a new IKEA catalog could be mistaken for that of a new iPhone. Really. They're sponsoring some big events in NYC this week to celebrate the new catalog.
- IKEAhacker These are the ingenious ones. People whose inspiration not only hits in the store, but is expressed back home, too. See what folks have done to modify, trick-out, and make snazzy their IKEA purchases. My personal favorite is the cat transom. Scroll down at the link for the full effect, and instructions for how to do it!
- Secondary manufacturer of IKEA slip covers and other IKEA-friendly accessories, bemz.com
- The Swedish Furniture Name Generator is linked in the tuna can (Tynna Kanvik) comment below. Type in your username and watch it become an IKEA product.
- Flckr "club" for people to share bookshelf design projects. Some neat pictures/ideas here.
- How to make a $149 designer end table from an $18 IKEA piece. And, other, even more impressive projects completed with the same piece.
- IKEA quiz to test how well you really know the culture. (Ex: Ingvar Kamprad is a bar stool. T/F?)
- IKEA Heightsis an online soap opera shot in a California IKEA store, and at the beginning at least, unbeknownst to the store's management. Really kind of funny, decent writing and creative use of all those fully furnished rooms and warehouse spaces.
The History
Now that you have a taste of IKEA culture, just where did all this influence come from? The history of Ikea begins with Ingvar Kamprad who is not a bar stool. Born on a farm named Elmtaryd, near the town Agunnaryd, Kamprad's official IKEA biography begins when he began selling matches to his farmyard neighbors. At the age of 5. Buying them in bulk, then selling them individually, he discovered he could "still make a good profit." (Yes, this part reminds me of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart for some reason.)
Graduating from individual matchsticks to seeds, cards, Christmas ornaments and ballpoint pens, Ingvar founds IKEA in 1943. Soon, orders outpace his ability to personally fulfill them, so he starts advertising in newspapers and shipping products via mail order. IKEA begins designing its own goods when competitors lean on suppliers to snub the quickly competitive upstart. In 1956 an employee discovers that taking the legs off a table and packing all the pieces in a "flat pack" make is easier and safer to ship. IKEA now claims a significant environmental positive impact on the environment from flat packing as it requires less material, less fuel, and less emissions than do traditionally shipped fully-assembled furniture.
The first IKEA store (in Sweden, of course) opens in 1958. It is the largest furniture showroom in Sweden at the time. The "self-serve warehouse" debuts in a store modeled on the New York Guggenheim in 1965. Thousands wait in line on the first day of business. IKEA uses denim to cover reclining chairs and mattresses in 1973, lowering their cost and simultaneously making them longer lasting.
The 1st American store opens in 1985 (Philadelphia!). In the same year, IKEA begins selling a couch based on the design for a shopping cart, looking to increase stability and strength of support. In 1991 IKEA develops its own sawmills and production facilities to cut costs, decrease the impact of the production process on the environment, and increase the quality and consistency of their products.
In 2000 IKEA publishes a document called IWAY which details IKEA's position on environmental management, child labor, and energy use, explaining that all suppliers are expected to comply with IKEA's standards of operation in these areas themselves. The company also partners with UNICEF to spearhead a project in northern India to move child laborers from production to education. 500 villages and some 80,000 children were impacted in the pilot. The program is now expanded to include 6,000 villages, and supports health, nutrition, and women's self-sufficiency projects (they handweave baskets and pillow covers for IKEA stores to support themselves and their children, and receive instruction in financial management, literacy, and local political leadership).
The Present
There are 301 IKEA stores (34 are privately owned franchises) in 25 countries employing 123,000 people directly. Annual sales were 215 billion euros last year, or $27 billion dollars. Each store carries more than 9,500 products, and despite the eco-friendly efforts in printing their catalog, 198 million copies were distributed worldwide last year. 590 million people visited IKEA stores in 2009.
The Environment
IKEA wrote its first environmental policy in 1990, and now has a number of initiatives designed to maximize IKEA's relationship with the planet. Some are in-house only (most IKEA stores recycle 80% or more of the material produced in the stores on a daily basis) while others are partnerships with independent groups like the World Wildlife Fund, UNICEF, Save The Children, and the Forest Stewardship Council. IKEA hired its first forestry manager in 1998. Now there are more than one, and they work to see that IKEA's wood products come from sustainable sources.
IKEA publishes a Never Ending Job list on its website lists the many ways IKEA tries to lessen its own negative impact and people and nature. It begins with this statement:
We have decided to help create a world where we take better care of the environment, the earth’s resources, and each other. We know that sometimes we are part of the problem. So, we are working hard to become a part of the solution. We are weighing the pros and cons, continually examining and changing things. All these steps, in lots and lots of areas, add up to something big … and noticeable. The job has already started, and it is a never-ending one.
...And continues with these items, which are found here (these are just a few examples):
#4) IKEA refuses to use timber from ancient or nonrenewable forests.
#5) Moving towards 100% renewable energy for all store electricity and heating needs. Currently at 47%, up 14% since 2005.
#7) No chlorine in catalog production.
#14) Transportation; many IKEA stores provide shuttle buses and support for bicycling, carpooling, and hybrid vehicle use to and from stores. In Denmark, stores have bike trailers attached to store loaner-bicycles for people who ride their own bikes to the store to transport the purchases home, using pedal power. They ride the IKEA bike back to the store and pick up their own from storage upon its return. And ride home. Danish IKEA shoppers, on a related note, are in fantastic shape.
#17) Use of easily recyclable and light (less energy for required to transport) plastic "ledges" instead of wooden pallets.
#19) Education for rural farmers in Pakistan led to 50% drop in use of pesticides, 50% drop in use of water, and 30% drop in use of fertilizer in the production of supply chain cotton and other agri-goods.
#22) Leftover food from store restaurants is processed and converted into biogas in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. I really like this one. Why can't we do this here?
#26) Karlstad Sweden and Corsico Milan stores piloted geothermal heating and cooling systems, drilling holes into the ground to tap groundwater and natural earth sources of energy to reduce oil and natural gas heating and cooling of the stores. Swedish IKEA stores already get 91% of their energy needs from wind and hydro sources.
#27) Switched transport chain from gas-fueled trucks to electricity-run rail cars in Sweden.
#33) Banned freon and HCFC from all products. In 1992.
#36) No more incandescent light bulbs in IKEA stores starting Sept. 1, 2010, making IKEA the1st US retail chain to do it. New employees are given 6 low-energy lightbulbs at orientation, and when these burn out receive replacements after recycling them at the store where they work.
#63) Swiss IKEA employees bring their old newspapers and magazines to work where they are used by customers to pack glass products for safe transport home, reducing the use of processed packaging materials.
#75) Plans for 150 IKEA stores to be outfitted with solar panels, based on a pilot program with 9 stores. 10% of each store's electricity needs will be met through photovoltaic means.
Also, following the SE Asia tsumani, IKEA donated hundreds of thousands of blankets, sheets, mattresses, quilts, and toys to UNICEF for distribution in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India.
IKEA no longer has disposable plastic bags. With a new policy in place, customers either bring their own bags or purchase the iconic IKEA blue reusable plastic bag for .59 cents.
The Reality Check
Now, I know that an industrial behemoth the size of IKEA cannot exist without making some negative impact on the world. I have concerns about the disposable nature of much of Ikea's products. I've seen some of them on the sidewalk by Columbia during dorm move-out weekends. Also, all that flat packaging still involves a lot of paper and cardboard and the chemical/industrial processes used to create it and transport it. And, it really bugs me to this day that I saw a poster in a VA IKEA that said, "No idea is worth anything if you can't put a pricetag on it." Makes my skin crawl to read that line. Add to that the fact that Ingvar used European law decades ago to make IKEA a non-profit organization dedicated to architectural and interior design innovation in order to escape corporate taxation, and you get a little bit of the downside of IKEA. There are also sources claiming that IKEA, rather than cutting ties with suppliers who violate their IWAY standards, continue working with them. IKEA claims this is a natural part of working with suppliers to help them change their ways, critics call it "Greenwashing," or using environmentalism as a cover for Earth-destructive trade practices.
In their defense, unlike BP's CEO who we have all heard complaining about wanting his life back and then going on vacation during the Gulf oil spill, Ingvar Kamprad was comparison shopped for hotel deals when traveling for IKEA and set a standard that all IKEA executives fly coach. This may just make him cheap. Which is the biggest criticism of IKEA's products overall, I'd say.
The Anti-BP?
At least there is one industrial giant whose attitude towards people and the environment is not that of BP. And IKEA actually has a record of decades of action in protecting the environment from its own threat, and those of its business partners, as opposed to the fairy tale kind of BP. And for that, and my Expedit book cases, I applaud IKEA and remain a helpless fanboy.
Our Expedit (on the right side of the frame):
Everything in this picture, except the balloons, small chairs, small table, and books is from IKEA. Just like Fight Club, except with a 3 year old.
TWLTW
- Vocabulary
- Synchrotism- integration of ideas from different cultures that confer a political, social, military, or economic advantage to the culture conducting the integration
- Stenosis- Abnormal narrowing of a body canal or passageway, particularly arteries, heart valves, and the connector between the 3rd and 4th ventricles in the brain (causing hydrocephalus, or abnormal buildup of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain).
- sedulous- Devoted to a task, diligent.
- Movie News
- The actor who played Anton/Mercury in The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is the new Spiderman.
- Ian McCellan has warned MGM that if they don't start The Hobbit soon, that he'll cancel his subscription. MGM is rumored to have finance problems, under which they just canceled the next James Bond film.
- A movie documentary version of Freakonomics is due out in October.
- The van eating the lizard at about minute 5:55 is just too much weird fun not to share:
- If you type "Define:" before a word in the Google search bar, you'll get a list of actual definitions for that word from a variety of sources, instead of a list of links to definitions that don't actually contain any part of the definition.
What Did You Learn This Week?