IKEA Redesigns Its Bestsellers

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ikea-furniture-inflation-billy-c2f835bc

by jbredeche • 3 years ago

187 413 3 years ago

wsj.com

haspoken• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/YQiDs

Simulacra• 3 years ago

It's remarkable what they've done with cardboard and veneer to make everything.

leros• 3 years ago

This doesn't seem like a bad thing. Many people treat Ikea furniture as disposable and this seems more environmentally friendly. If people are happy with a cardboard coffee table, seems like a win.

tivert2• 3 years ago

This doesn't seem like a bad thing. Many people treat Ikea furniture as disposable and this seems more environmentally friendly. If people are happy with a cardboard coffee table, seems like a win.

Disposable furniture is the antithesis of "environmentally friendly."

If people are happy with a cardboard coffee table, seems like a win.

I had one once, and I was not happy with it (a Lack). It literally disintegrated after about a year. People often push against a coffee table when sitting on a sofa, and it was not designed for those forces and came apart at the seams.

netrus• 3 years ago

I have several Lacks at my place that are >15 years old. When I ever get sick of them, I will put them on eBay for a free pickup, and within an hour a student will show up and be happy with the free coffee table that they can use in their student apartment for some more years. Dinner tables used to be made from solid wood and were pretty much indestructible. But how many families dine on a >100 year old table? Most indestructible furniture will get discarded as well at some point (well before they are actually broken beyond repair), because its out of style, has the wrong measures, is too heavy ...

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

What did you do to it?!?!?!

Lacks are notoriously sturdy for their "cardboardness". People literally turn their Lacks into server racks, they're that sturdy.

benj111• 3 years ago

ill defend ikea as somewhat environmentally friendly, as they sell the same items for years, so instead of having to buy a new crockery set when too many dining plates are broken, or a whole a new set of shelves because you just need one more, you can add to what you already have.

disposible furniture isnt environmentally friendly though. if you want a cheap item of furniture for short term use, get one second hand.

Having said this, I got my first Billy bookcase 15 years ago, it's still going strong with the more recent additions. So they don't have to be disposable items.

Brendinooo3• 3 years ago

My gripe with IKEA in this regard is: yes, they'll keep the same product lines, but they change up the product finishes enough to matter. I had a PAX unit in Beech Veneer which, once they got rid of, I could no longer extend. Also did my kitchen with them and they got rid of the finish I picked shortly after, which meant that I couldn't replace panels like I thought I might have been able to.

Could still get accessories for the inside of this stuff though, which definitely isn't nothing.

oblio9• 3 years ago

I think if you take care of Ikea and you're not super unlucky or move very frequently, Ikea furniture for sure can last several decades.

And at that point... how much furniture do you really need? Does it really need to follow you to your grave?

sct202• 3 years ago

I agree especially when people seem to throw away solid wood furniture all the time near me because it's too heavy or cumbersome to move or even the wrong color. There's a shop that refurbishes old wood furniture and it seems like the main thing they do is paint it white, blue, or black.

pcurve2• 3 years ago

I hope they keep the original ones though... e.g. (Billy Classic).

Wish I had never sold the Jerker desk from 20 years ago. It was built like a tank.

dbg314152• 3 years ago

I just came here to say this! (=

watmough• 3 years ago

Yeah, hanging onto mine! Awesome desk.

They used to crop up on craigslist occasionally for $100-$200. not checked in a while.

290830113977782• 3 years ago

I hope they keep the original ones though

TFA states that the white Billy was already built the "new" way. It's only the mock-woodgrain one that's changing to catch up.

pragmatick• 3 years ago

They already changed the Billy at some point. My mother has a really old one (80s or 90s, I think) and we bought doors for it and they wouldn't fit. Turns out the "new" Billys are 2cm or so wider. We could install the doors but there would be a 2cm gap in the middle. Tried it with a Billy bought later and it fit.

bell-cot• 3 years ago

And here I was thinking to buy some more bookshelves, and assuming that another Ikea Billy set would be good enough for my den.

el_don_almighty• 3 years ago

Our Billy shelves are 15 years old and I would not consider them disposable, poorly designed, or fabricated from low-quality materials. Frankly, they have been an excellent investment. The same goes for the couches our kids jumped on for years.

I suspect this comes from having been assembled by an engineer and not the average [insert mechanically unqualified archetype here for flamewar].

For decorating reasons that I cannot explain, I periodically disassemble some pieces and store them for future reintroduction after painting or some other visual adjustments without issue, keeping in mind that all those little metal bits must be stored in a bag and tie-wrapped to the kit.

I find a certain elegance in the austere design simplicity and construction but recognize it may not be to everyone's preferred taste. Like most objects around us, IKEA products have potential for good or evil, depending upon the user's intent and usage.

teachrdan• 3 years ago

It's apparent you didn't RTFA before posting. From the part before the paywall, even:

"IKEA grew into a furniture behemoth with a relentless focus on keeping costs low, but that goal has become more challenging. The price of metal, glass, wood and plastic have spiraled up, as have shipping costs. Inflation has squeezed consumers’ wallets. Managers at IKEA knew that something had to change to keep prices down and profits up, so in the past couple of years they have taken some of their products back to the drawing board."

This explains why the nicer Ikea furniture you purchased 15 years ago is of a much higher quality than what is built today.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

The Billy I bought in 2020 is certainly of disposable quality. It barely holds the weight of the books thus barely performs its primary function.

kps• 3 years ago

[edited] The article seems to imply America and Europe still have the 1999 version, for now, but Contingencies' comment suggests both are present.

sockaddr• 3 years ago

I love IKEA but these choices are not structurally-equivalent substitutes. They'll start becoming trash the (second) time you try to rebuild them when you move. It's the same garbage that Walmart has been selling.

Yes you buy something for 1/3rd the cost of something made of real wood but it'll last 1/20th the time.

What is particularly irritating is when you try to insert a cam or a screw and it totally mutilates the particle board rendering it useless or at least severely compromising the structure.

I'd rather see prices stay higher (so I'm screwed in a way that I'm aware) instead of getting screwed in unknown ways.

hattmall• 3 years ago

What's interesting is that if your trying to build your own stuff is that the veneers and things are expensive, but actual wood is cheap.

Ikea, or someone else could probably make huge profits and great quality furniture where you buy the flatpack with hardware and veneers from them but it's design to add your own wood for massively improved stability. You could even have a few guys with miter and table saws chopping locally sourced 2x4s and plywood that fits the kit.

kube-system2• 3 years ago

Ikea has a decent amount of cheap furniture that is already solid pine.

majormajor2• 3 years ago

Cutting your own pine boards to replace the particleboard shelves and side panels in your Billy bookcase is likely to give you ok-but-also-not-exactly-straight-and-parallel results without a lot of specialized tools and techniques.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

Cabinetry grade wood is actually expensive.

Boltgolt• 3 years ago

For many types of furniture there are different price points at IKEA and you can pay for more quality. For bar tables for instance, you can go for a TOMMARYD and have a cheap flimsy table. But if you have the budget to spend over a hundred euros more you can go for a fully wooden NORDVIKEN.

inferiorhuman4• 3 years ago

Hate to break it to you but the top is particleboard, and on the extendable versions there's a lot more particleboard.

StrictDabbler• 3 years ago

The correct way to assemble Ikea furniture is to apply wood glue (PVA or polyurethane) along every joint, in every screw hole, on every dowel, and along the edges of every backing board.

For extra points you can wipe polyurethane along any raw particle-board surfaces to seal them, like those on the bottom of a vertical unit.

It's about five minutes extra effort and $0.50 worth of glue for something like a large Billy bookcase.

This basically turns the entire piece into a single composite structure. It's incredibly durable. You cannot disassemble it to move but you can move it whole many, many times without anything breaking.

I have had to take a large sledgehammer to an Ikea entertainment center that I'd glued.

Walmart garbage does not respond the same way to this treatment. The Walmart (or Wayfair) particle board is a wooden oatmeal cookie. It crumbles from within regardless of how the joints are treated.

wildzzz2• 3 years ago

Ikea does sometimes use that low quality particle board for some things but at least they seem to be intelligent as to what materials they use where. Whereas Walmart just sells things entirely made of that shit.

runjake• 3 years ago

As far as I can tell, a lot of the more recent IKEA stuff we've bought is using that "wooden oatmeal cookie"[1] and honeycomb cardboard junk. I think some commenters are underestimating how much their materials have changed.

We've even have an older version of a shelf unit that is nice, solid pine, and gone and bought the current version and the current version has changed to that wooden oatmeal cookie[1] crap.

Glue does still help, though.

1. Great term, so fitting! I'm stealing it.

wlll• 3 years ago

I started doing this several years ago, the increase in durability is significant.

ChildOfChaos• 3 years ago

I've noticed this with my wardrobe I bought from Ikea.

I have had to order replacement drawers and had issues with having to reattach it often, until I just glued it all down and now it's lasted and is completely stable.

cityofdelusion2• 3 years ago

Wood glue is nice for Ikea stuff still made from reconstituted wood grain products. Unfortunately, they are starting to use a lot of the cardboard mesh hexagonal filler that doesn't respond well to glue at all. I used bondo to glue some of that stuff together, but its not very practical.

meragrin_• 3 years ago

For extra points you can wipe polyurethane along any raw particle-board surfaces to seal them, like those on the bottom of a vertical unit.

This alone is probably worth its weight in gold.

aidenn04• 3 years ago

I have a wayfair MDF desk that has moved 4 times with me and is still in amazing shape, so YMMV.

SomewhatLikely• 3 years ago

I would do this, but I've misread or not carefully paid attention to Ikea instructions on probably half the items I've built. If I was unable to disassemble and undo my mistake the savings from buying IKEA else vanish.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

IKEA sells utter garbage. They're the furnishings equivalent of "fast fashion".

latchkey• 3 years ago

'fast fashion' is not the same as utter garbage unless you just want to be a snob about things. People buy stuff from Ikea non-stop and it is perfectly ok to have 'fast fashion'.

contingencies3• 3 years ago

Yes, that's what the market wants. Ikea win because they (1) have stock (2) have a short and known delivery window (3) have a functional website (4) have showrooms if necessary (5) have instructions people can follow (6) basically invented popular flatpack furniture (7) flatpacks fit in cars, up stairs and around corners (8) they provide nominal styling choices and height adjustment (9) have economies of scale.

Many customers don't care about tomorrow (when they are on their keens cursing putting the thing they ordered together) or the next year (when they move house and it falls apart). They care about now. Convenience is king. Ikea know what they are doing.

yamtaddle2• 3 years ago

Yes, but it's better than the utter garbage at Wal Mart and Target (better made; better designed; easier [yes!] to assemble) and better than the fugly furniture at places like Nebraska Furniture Mart (cheaper; isn't trying and failing to make it look like your $200 desk belongs to a fortune 500 executive or your $300 couch is fine leather heirloom-quality furniture; made just as well)

You have to spend quite a bit more to consistently beat it. Or you have to be really into non-trendy (so, no mid-century-modern) used furniture.

Symbiote4• 3 years ago

Ikea sells a range of furniture, from low to middle prices. Cheap items use cheap materials and coatings and cheap/few fasteners.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

I don't know where you're from... but in US and a number of European countries - IKEA doesn't even come close to being the "garbage option".

dirtyid5• 3 years ago

Some movers seem to be very good at moving Ikea furniture. Wrap it up, cinch it tight with straps. I've seen packed billy bookcases and garbage malm wardrobes moved this way without structural compromise. Saved a lot of time packing too. Bigger items need to be disassembled like bed I would pick something with steel frame that gets nut and bolted.

crazygringo3• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when you try to move it, none of these changes alter that. The main example in the article is replacing a wooden veneer with paper foil. That is totally non-structural.

And IKEA stuff costs a lot less than 1/3 of finished solid wood furniture.

There are a lot of people who consistently move apartments every 1-3 years and don't even want to take their old stuff to the next one, because it makes no sense in a new layout. I have 3 Billy bookcases in my current apartment to fit precisely the width between two pillars in the wall, and when I move they'll go straight to the curb. I had a totally different set of bookcases in my last apartment because the layout was totally different.

Maybe you want prices to stay higher, but I and most other people sure don't.

I have a few very nice expensive non-IKEA pieces (couch, bed, kitchen table) that last and which I take from apartment to apartment. But everything else is "modular storage/surfaces" (bookcases, cubbies, side/end tables, dresser, bedside table, desk) which is for the current apartment only because it fits it specifically. I want it to be cheap and disposable. IKEA fills the need perfectly, and I want prices to stay as low as possible. I don't want to spend more so any of it would last a move.

(And many times moving isn't even an option. Because you move in with somebody else so you toss all your old furniture, or you move across the country and you'd rather cheaply send a few boxes via post, rather than hiring an expensive moving service.)

xapata• 3 years ago

For a long distance move, it's often cheaper to sell and repurchase than move furniture.

agentdrtran• 3 years ago

also, people are glad to take slightly busted IKEA stuff for free or cheap. It goes quickly in all the facebook groups I'm in.

ska2• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when y

Some of it has. Not everything they offer is particle board, etc. though.

rngname222• 3 years ago

Huh, that strikes me as such a large-carbon-footprint way of living, but to each their own.

audunw2• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when you try to move it, none of these changes alter that.

This keeps getting repeated.. but when I was studying, I bought used IKEA furniture, moved it around several times to different apartments, and then sold it again when I moved from that city.

I've also renovated my house recently which involved disassembling and reassembling some IKEA furniture. They're still fine.

It depends on the type of furniture of course. Yes, there are some specific ones that are harder to disassemble and move without breaking them. But not all.

I want it to be cheap and disposable.

Isn't it possible to sell them on something like craigslist? I've bought and sold used IKEA furniture before, but I guess it depends on country/culture how willing people are to buy them.

which is for the current apartment only because it fits it specifically.

I think this is an excellent point. We live in a home I intend to stay in for a long time. It's a bit on the small side, but we try to make the most of it by optimizing the furniture for that specific home. I've even customized IKEA furniture, cutting them to the right width etc. This lets us avoid moving to a new, larger home. That would certainly cost a lot and would be very resource intensive.

I can imagine the next owner would want to keep at least some of the furniture for at least the first few years too, depending on their life situation.

01100011• 3 years ago

I have a couch that's moved twice and it is as good as it was when I bought it.

IKEA makes many products that are metal(I have a couple carts like that) and even some of their particle board furniture(two large dressers I have) do fine if you move them carefully.

My moves were from SoCal to the Bay Area and back, so not cross country, but not local either.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when you try to move it

IKEA has different levels of quality, including amazing cardboard LACK.

IKEA also has a lot of solid wood furniture.

What pertains to the article, is that IKEA is keeping prices of the expensive stuff lower than competition... by pushing materials to their limits.

I had moderately expensive IKEA furniture and I had "designer furniture". IKEA isn't much different. I have Besta unit, that has moved multiple times thousands of miles over the last 8 years... still looks pretty good.

dbg314152• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when you try to move it...

I've had the same Ikea Jerker desk since 1998. It still looks like new, and I've moved across the country with it several times. I even bought a few more when I could... they stopped making them 10-15 years ago. Best desk ever made. Totally modular, so you can canabalize other parts and mix and match to get exactly the desk configuration you want.

https://www.thefrugalnoodle.com/jerker-standing-desk/

https://images.offerup.com/mn6NJESc_F7ekPiguDHgD08JNcI=/600x...

MrFoof• 3 years ago

And IKEA stuff costs a lot less than 1/3 of finished solid wood furniture.

To put things into perspective, I ordered a desk from a local company. I had a lot of customization options, but basically I wanted a 60 x 30" top. The legs I ordered actually have height adjustment ... with a CRANK. Because it'll never break. So you have 60-inch long boards, maybe about 4-inches wide each, pressed together into a single board. There's attempt to match up the pattern, so at a quick glance most people would think it's a solid piece. Also not much heavier, because there's less adhesives needed to produce the single board.

With the top you had choices not only in the type of wood, but how that wood was engineered (or if it was a single piece).

* If I went with a butcher block construction, which is heavier, that was $1200.

* I went with a face-grain engineered walnut top. That was $2000 for just the top. Looks great, too.

* If I went with a SINGLE solid board, there was not only a real lead time, but the top was $6500.

And that was just for American walnut. I could've picked far pricier woods. Could've picked some garbage pine or something too, but note the spread there. I think for a 60x30, the total spread of options was $500 to $11,000 depending on the construction and the wood chosen.

This is because nature is really bad at producing large perfect boards, especially for a total area past a few square feet. Turns out. A lot of stuff we use even in modern construction is not just engineered, but often uses petroleum products. Plywood uses a urea formaldehyde, but lo-and-behold we figured out how to produce that out of oil! OSB is no different. It's why when 5-over-1s under construction (before fire suppression equipment is installed) catch fire, they go up very fast, and usually burn hot enough where the radiant heat damages nearby buildings.

When you get into large single pieces, not only are they rare, but you want to let the moisture release, preferably naturally. So you have all these boards, being stored in large climate controlled warehouses for months if not years, before they are used in a piece of furniture. That massive opportunity cost of literally keeping boards around is part of why you pay.

I have some short "entertainment benches" I bought many years ago that were made by Ethnicraft in Vietnam, I believe for Crate & Barrel. Engineered face grain, walnut, on a nickel-plated steel parsons style base. Got them over a decade ago, still look perfect, and at a glance, people think they're one piece. They're not, but again at a quick glance they do. All in they were $4500 for the pair. I could've got some solid ones from a German company named E15. The pair would've been over $20,000 then, and over $30,000 today.

-- -----

Meanwhile, you can get a similarly sized desk from IKEA, with legs, for $370. It's particle board with a glued on outer surface to protect it.

shortcake27• 3 years ago

I get that you don't want to take it with you, but why chuck it on the curb where it's likely to become waste when you could sell it cheap or give it away for free? This happens every month at my apartment building - perfectly good stuff that could be used by someone else, thrown away on the curb and often damaged by weather or vandals.

astrange• 3 years ago

IKEA has always fallen apart when you try to move it, none of these changes alter that.

I've moved all of mine 3-4 times and it's fine. It actually got stronger last time because the mover's hobby was repairing Ikea furniture.

nerdjon• 3 years ago

Just to throw in my prospective, sure some Ikea stuff doesn't move well.

But for me the Billy bookcases have moved great. I have some that have now survived 3 moves and minus some scratches on the side (which isn't really anything unique to Ikea) they look and function like brand new. One of these even has glass doors on it.

Now I have never bought or tried to move a bed from Ikea, but I think their organization stuff like Billy, Kallax, move just fine.

Semaphor• 3 years ago

And IKEA stuff costs a lot less than 1/3 of finished solid wood furniture.

Looking at beds (frames, not boxspring), it’s 1/2 to about the same (that one is partially solid wood) compared to what we paid for fully solid wood 2 months ago, far from "a lot less".

hbarka• 3 years ago

When I tried to move my KALLAX [1], the top row of cubicles lost its structural integrity. It was the best thing to happen because it made a great pot rack. I removed the top half of cubes and in the vacant space I put a black pipe across the walls. I can hang at least 15 pots and pans on the pipe using hooks, and in top shelf can go even more pots. KALLAX one of IKEA’s greatest hits.

[1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/assembly_instructions/kallax-shel...

wkat4242• 3 years ago

Ikea in the 80s was pretty solid stuff actually. It was cheap but still made of solid wood that could be taken apart many times. My parents still have a lot of furniture from that era.

More recently, my GALANT desks have survived international moves just fine. Sadly they are now discontinued.

hef19898• 3 years ago

Their PAX line of wardrobes totally reassembles a lot of times, same goes for IVAR. The latest Billies, well, I kind of doubt that.

wildrhythms• 3 years ago

Anecdotally, I have moved across the country 3 times with IKEA furniture I bought nearly 10 years ago and nothing has broken. I'm not sure where this myth comes from.

achenatx• 3 years ago

why would I want my furniture to last 20 years? My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new.

We also have moved ikea couches multiple times and they are fine. It is easy to get replacement cushions when the kids spill stuff on the couches and when the wife decides she wants to get rid of it, it doesnt bother me. We have had our ikea for 6-7 years now, but before that we had very expensive louis shanks furniture and when her tastes changed to modern we got rid of it all.

She wants to change the dining room furniture, but at 1K per chair with 12 chairs that is not happening.

oblio9• 3 years ago

why would I want my furniture to last 20 years? My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new.

I was always wondering where people's disposable income went :-))

waynesonfire• 3 years ago

Resale of Ikea is close to zero unlike those 1k chairs. The only fool is the poor person unable to afford furniture that holds it's value. When you're ready for something new, you can actually sell the old gear for non-trivial amount.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

When I buy furniture, I buy it for life despite the premium I pay.

0xbadcafebee3• 3 years ago

My wife will cycle pieces after 5-10 because she wants something new

It's the cirrrrcle of consumerrrr capitalismmmmmmm

berjin• 3 years ago

she wants something new

Probably because the marketing industry has tricked us into this way of thinking. The traditional model of buying good quality 'goods' and passing them through generations is not good for business. They even managed to sell bottled water and a lot of people drive SUVs to go to the shops. I bought a couch recently and I could not find one with washable covers. Companies love selling tacky shit that we'll have to replace in a few years and it's terrible for the planet. I feel there should be a tax on fragile, low quality junk or perhaps a 10 year warranty or disposal costs baked into the price. The external cost of the pollution (microplastics, e-waste etc) is not factored into the price of anything. I try to buy used if I can but admittedly it's not always easy to make the trades compared to buying from a retail box store.

gnicholas• 3 years ago

Moving companies typically exclude particle board items like these from their insurance coverage. I've successfully moved a few IKEA items, but if they're taking 90% of the wood out of certain parts, I have to imagine they're going to be even more fragile now.

0xbadcafebee3• 3 years ago

You say this like it's unintentional

djmips• 3 years ago

Other things come to mind - do they out gas more? Do they release more toxic gases when they burn?

ouid• 3 years ago

The point of ikea furniture is that you can throw it away when you move. Moving furniture is more expensive than buying new ikea furniture. Just don't buy their couches.

onos• 3 years ago

I’ve had my ikea desk through six moves and 17 years. True, a bit rickety in spots, but it still works.

LargoLasskhyfv• 3 years ago

You're using it wrong. Use duct-tape, sugru, super-glue or combinations thereof. Or simply trash it and get it new, or something real instead :-)

thecleaner• 3 years ago

Very different experience here. Bought a Billy, moved houses twice, the fucker is still alive and strong and grimly stands in a corner supporting two shelves worth of heavy books and a ton of paperwork.

Guybrush_T• 3 years ago

I have the same experience with a Billy. It's much more study and solid feeling than the other solid wood shelves I've bought from IKEA.

eternityforest• 3 years ago

I almost never see any particle board or similar fail in normal use except at the fasteners. If they would stop using those fasteners, things might be a lot more durable.

It's already repairable fairly easily with basic tools, and it's probably cheaper and easier to reinforce the points where it breaks with a block of scrap or something than to buy actual nice furniture.

Injection molding is cheap, I'm not sure why they don't use plastic inserts instead of bare wood on metal.

I'm also not sure why they try to hide screws so hard and avoid brackets and other hardware. Letting screws show and selling a matching line of tablecloths and mats to hide them would be a more complete implementation of the "Design to make stuff work without quality materials" philosophy.

The fake wood has potential. I still like it even though it doesn't have really value or quality, because... it works amazingly well for what it is, and there's still room to improve.

GaryNumanVevo• 3 years ago

Coincidentally, I'm writing this with my feet up on a vintage IKEA coffee table that's solid pine. I got it second hand from a thrift store for $20, but it must be at least 15 years old. When I move, I'll probably just donate it back to Goodwill, and the cycle will continue

datacruncher01• 3 years ago

Not a good trend, IKEA is like the Toyota of furniture. It's inexpensive but functional. With these changes they will be no different than cheap trash furniture. So why pay any premium for Ikea when I can just Amazon the cheapest equivalent furniture knowing both will equally break sooner than later?

dsfyu404ed• 3 years ago

Toyota has NEVER been inexpensive.

They've never been conspicuously or indulgently expensive but they've never been the cheapest option in a given class. And that has been a key part of their success in the North American market.

The parallel to the furniture market isn't so cut and clear but Ikea does not generally compete with the big box stores on the lowest end FWIW.

Fine tuning quality, feature and price points for their products to attract or repel various customer demographics is something big brands spend a lot of effort on.

ramesh31• 3 years ago

Toyota has NEVER been inexpensive.

They are over the long run. It's a lot like Apple hardware. Slightly more expensive at first, but massively better resale value and durability, resulting in a much lower total cost of ownership. This is basically just the "cheap boots" paradox though, so people instead buy Hyundai/Kia based on the sticker price.

aidenn04• 3 years ago

The Sienna is often the cheapest minivan available in the US. The Transit Connect Wagon is currently available for cheaper in some regions, but was never really marketed as a family vehicle, and is being discontinued this year, in its 10th year of nearly zero updates.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

When it comes to US market, IKEA is only beat by the custom kitchens from the big box stores. Even midrange IKEA is better than Ashley or similar common furniture stores... not to mention that it's drastically cheaper.

wildzzz2• 3 years ago

The only thing that seems to separate Ikea from similarly priced stuff on Amazon is the fact that I've never had misaligned parts from Ikea. Their QA is top notch despite some of their cheap stuff being very flimsy. I buy from Ikea knowing that I probably won't need to return it or have to talk to some Chinese furniture factory about getting spare parts because some are missing or are so poor quality, they broke during install. Ikea is certainly cheap for some things so you should use wood glue if you want them to last, these are definitely not hierloom pieces.

lutorm2• 3 years ago

I love IKEA but I'd have to disagree with their QA being top notch. I can't keep track of how many times I've had to go back because some piece in the flat pack was damaged.

JohnFen6• 3 years ago

IKEA is like the Toyota of furniture.

Except that Toyota vehicles can take a lot of neglect and keep on going.

throwaway192102• 3 years ago

I've never had a piece of IKEA furniture that couldn't do its basic job even after 10+ years and removing clearly important structural bits, I'm honestly not sure what more I could do to reach the point where anything better is worth it

seventhtiger• 3 years ago

Except that Toyota is the king of reliability and IKEA furniture is not even worth moving. Better to trash it and buy new.

oblio9• 3 years ago

Honestly, how do you move furniture? Do you want it over to 2 guys with a chainsaw?

Ikea furniture can definitely be moved.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

Cheapest furniture on Amazon manages to be considerably worse, than cheapest IKEA products.

throwaway22032• 3 years ago

I used to buy a lot of Ikea stuff (to save time) and recently I've just started making my own from basic plywood etc because the quality has totally gone to shit. I used to buy the pine stuff, there's very little of that any more.

It's designed in such a way now that if you use it slightly outside of parameters it's fucked. Like, pick up a chest of drawers the wrong way and the particleboard snaps in a way that is impossible to fix properly without replacing the entire beam.

Try and screw something to the side of a Kallax or whatever, it's honeycomb cardboard so screws just fall through. Yeah you can do it with a bit of effort, but I mean, meh.

I don't think that square items of furniture like that should be disposable. You should be able to just cut it up and use the scrap wood for other projects. Even if you don't want to, leave it outside your flat or house on a dry day, someone will.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

I loved Ikea stuff, the latest purchase of BESTÅ TV storage is really awful. It is falling apart and I barely even touch it. The drawer brackets cannot hold a drawer, (I don't have many items) and they block each other while opening and closing the drawers. The materials are very dodgy and poor quality.

I cannot even give it away, sell it or recycle it. Considering making my own stuff eventually.

_fat_santa• 3 years ago

There's a wired dichotomy that I found with IKEA furniture, most of their furniture is cheaply made and won't stand the test of time, but some of their stuff just seems to be bulletproof and indestructible. Right now I'm sitting on an Markus chair that my parents bought for me in the 7th grade (I was 13 at the time), now I'm 29 and the chair is still kicking along showing no signs of giving up.

pram• 3 years ago

Yeah I have an IKEA bed base and it’s basically just four solid pieces of wood. They also recently made a floor lamp I got that’s really solid. In closing, it’s a store of contrasts.

basch• 3 years ago

Like a lot of companies, IKEA sells things in various tiers. Dressers and bookcases have different price points, and at each price point is a different material quality level.

They however dont make it easy to identify like Kirkland Signature or Lexus.

Someone1234• 3 years ago

That's the worst thing about IKEA. They have a great selection of real wood stuff, but finding it is time-consuming in or out of store. Price is the best proxy but that isn't flawless or ideal.

CarVac• 3 years ago

The other proble is that sometimes the cheaply built chair is more comfortable and looks better than the solidly built chair… then the right option is to buy neither.

system2• 3 years ago

TIL Kirkland Signature is something better than standard Kirkland. Kirkland = cheap but okay, no matter what word you add after.

Hamuko2• 3 years ago

I love my MARKUS but I think I'm currently on my third one. The current one was exchanged during the 10-year warranty period since the gas spring started to leak on my floor.

Not sure what I'll do if this MARKUS gives up the ghost too. They redesigned the MARKUS and dropped the leather option, and the non-leather MARKUS has pitiful armrests.

spapas82• 3 years ago

I've also got a Markus at the office. Been using it for more that 10 years, 7 hours a day. It's still as good as new! Don't think of a better price/value office chair!

asfasfo3• 3 years ago

Almost all of my ikea stuff has lasted longer than I wanted it. I have a Poang from 2010, a table from 1998, a bookhshelf from 1994, and a dresser from 2006. Their classics last longer than most of the market.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

This is true for all their stuff approximately pre-2018. Most of my furniture is older and was great value. Now you have to be very watchful of the materials and test it out before buying.

antisthenes2• 3 years ago

How many times are we going to rediscover that free market isn't just companies competing for the customer on price, but companies competing in a race to the bottom on quality/cost to pad their earnings as well?

goostavos• 3 years ago

What? Doesn't the free market also gives you mid-range furniture options as well as high end wood workers that'll build anything you're willing to pay for? Ikea is optimizing for particle board rectangles because people in 'the market' mostly want affordable rectangles.

harimau777• 3 years ago

In my experience, the free market hollows out the medium range and lifts the price of the high range above what average people can afford. So all that's left for them is crap.

antisthenes2• 3 years ago

Doesn't the free market also gives you mid-range furniture options as well as high end wood workers that'll build anything you're willing to pay for?

The free market apparently gives you cardboard furniture at mid-range prices or custom built furniture that non-1% earners wouldn't even dream of affording, and not much inbetween.

$2700 dresser? No thanks.

The "reasonable" option is buying second-hand solid wood furniture on Craigslist and thrift stores in the ~$500-700 range.

syntheweave• 3 years ago

I'll be over here investing in shoe racks and resin shelves.

sottol• 3 years ago

So I was wondering why they'd openly admit in a WSJ article that they've "watered down" their furniture and are doubling down on their reputation for flimsy particle-board and paper construction.

Also, I've observed this trend starting way earlier than the pandemic and the start of recent inflation, I bought their butcher block countertops in 2013 and 2018 for my workshop. Let me just say I ripped out my 2013 ones and transferred as much of the old ones to the new workshop as I could.

I can see two reasons for this article:

1. Their customers are noticing and it shows in survey and satisfaction and this is an attempt at curtailing the reputation damage (but don't really see why it's in the WSJ then, maybe it'll show in the coming quarterly/yearly's and they can point to this later?),

2. or they're signaling to investors that they're going to boost profitability and/or margins.

Either way, not really a positive trend in my eyes.

But also unfortunately, it's not like the alternatives are generally much better :/ Seems to be an industry-wide trend.

EDIT: nevermind, Ikea is entirely privately held -- no investors to placate, so 1. maybe?

Symbiote4• 3 years ago

People who care about their carbon footprint, but still want new furniture, can pretend buying something cheap from Ikea is the solution.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

Corporate cost cuts reframed as a moral deed

tpmx2• 3 years ago

2. or they're signaling to investors that they're going to boost profitability and/or margins.

They don't have any investors. They have literally been building and growing this organically for 80 years.

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

This isn't a new thing, this is their equivalent of the Toyota Kaizen continous improvement thing.

Here's a book review of their "Democratic Design" book in which they discuss trying to fulfil 5 design paramaters,

Form, function, quality, price and sustainability:

https://uxdesign.cc/ikea-democratic-design-3-design-takeaway...

ROTMetro• 3 years ago

Enjoy your VOCs people.

oblio9• 3 years ago

VOC?

divarre• 3 years ago

Volatile Organic Compounds are indoor air pollutants [1]. For example, formaldehyde – classed as carcinogen – added to bind Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF).

[1] https://www.epa.gov/indoor-air-quality-iaq/volatile-organic-...

BonoboIO• 3 years ago

This is not new. IKEA is continuously redesigning their products and the name does not change. You can buy a billy book case that is fundamentally different than the model that was produced 35 years ago.

Less wood, less metal, more plastic, less material. Cost cutting at every point.

I have a Besta Casefeom 2018 that was made with 1mm wood veneer and it looks decent. The pins where the shelf rest are made from metal and some screws are also metal.

The 2022 version has paper foil printed to look like wood, the pins are plastic, the screws too. IT IS ABSOLUT TRASH! Literally.

The foil is so bad, you will scratch it of accidentally with your fingernails, the plastic screws are one time use only, maybe twice. The pins are bending without any weight on it. I returned it.

They look nearly the same, cost the same as 2018, but they are different. Be warned.

Hamuko2• 3 years ago

IKEA is continuously redesigning their products and the name does not change.

Not necessarily. The GNEDBY is an almost identical version of the BENNO, except that the shelves mount differently on the GNEDBY. I bought two GNEDBY shelves used (since they stopped making them) and when was setting it up, I discovered that one of them was slightly different from my four GNEDBYs. Turns out that it was a BENNO all along.

dirtyid5• 3 years ago

It's like Expedit -> Kallax, Ikea's always tweaking/value engineering their products and at some point the dimensions become different enough to warrant rename. I think Kallax shaved 1 cm off the thicker Expedit perimeter pieces to the point where two next to each other perceptually different.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

Yes BESTÅ TV storage is absolute trash.

tpmx2• 3 years ago

I so miss the cheap 150x75 cm Linnmon honeycomb tabletop.

Their default desk depth is now a mere 60 cm because everyone aparently use laptops on desks, nowadays. Ugh. Anything with more depth than that -> so much costlier.

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

Off topic, is there any business that will CNC/cut particle board to size, shape, and create holes etc?

Basically thingiverse for furniture.

It would be awesome to be able to customize and reorder parts. For novice users, parametric models could be used to perfectly fit your closet in some nook.

I know there are fully automatic wood cnc machines, but I’m not aware of any company that offers this service (at a reasonable price of course).

aaronblohowiak• 3 years ago

there are loads of cnc hobbyists looking to make some more money. post something on craigslist im sure you'll get some takers.

chucksta• 3 years ago

https://sendcutsend.com/

porphyra• 3 years ago

I've had good experiences with sendcutsend for small aluminum parts, not sure about large wood parts but they do support many materials including mdf and plywood.

https://sendcutsend.com/materials/baltic-birch-plywood/

Loic• 3 years ago

I was able to build a very nice desk[0] for my wife using wood from one provider[1] in Germany. It was CNC cut extremely precisely. I requested all the plates and used my wood tools to do all the small cuts, holes, etc. But you can ask them to cut the holes too. It saved me a lot of time and energy to have the plates ready at the right dimensions. I am sure you can find the same kind of providers wherever you live.

[0] https://dl.ceondo.com/public/stuff/desk.mp4

[1] https://www.plattenzuschnitt24.de/

Tyr42• 3 years ago

Cute desk.

vhodges• 3 years ago

https://www.opendesk.cc/

MisterTea3• 3 years ago

Reasonable price is relative. Real CNC woodworkers cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require a large commercial space with electric supply. The people who can afford those usually have plenty of work lined up for them. But that's not always the case.

Look around for small wood shops. My father owned one and had a Northwood with two 4x8 tables and 4 spindles. Mostly for in-house work but did a bunch of job shopping if someone came to him with decent drawings. A lot of work was one table so the other could be quickly setup for a one off.

aidenn04• 3 years ago

send-cut-send will do it, even from inkskape files, but nothing bigger than 44"x30" for MDF which limits furniture options somewhat.

rtpg2• 3 years ago

I have never tried anything complicated, but the home improvement store close to me, I can bring a thing of wood and they will make cuts to them along certain dimensions for like 10 cents a cut. I don't know if that's an offering in the US but to be honest from an ecological and logistical standpoint "let's have people be sent bespoke planks of wood" feels like a thing with a good amount of externalities compared to "you go to Home Depot and ask for cuts there"

fy202• 3 years ago

I don't know about CNC, but where I live in Europe there are plenty of companies that will cut and laminate wood to your specifications. I'd imagine this is what a lot of kitchen builders use for doors etc rather than doing it themselves.

blueridge3• 3 years ago

If you're in the market for buy-it-for-life solid wood furniture:

https://www.thejoinery.com

https://vermontwoodsstudios.com/

https://hedgehousefurniture.com

https://57stdesign.com

https://www.57thstreetbookcase.com/ (all bookcases, some veneer and plywood)

https://www.spekeklein.com/home

https://www.pompy.com/

https://www.chiltons.com/

https://roomandboard.com (mix of solid and veneer, some MDF)

These makers are in a league of their own, very expensive, incredibly beautiful hand-made pieces:

https://www.sammaloofwoodworker.com

https://www.thosmoser.com (highly recommended)

https://nakashimawoodworkers.com (new commissions around $7K-$15K for a coffee table, $20K-40K for dining table, plus shipping; older Nakashima pieces are highly valued in the art world and sell anywhere between $15K-$300K)

https://www.wright20.com/search/nakashima/items#past

Edit: Also, to echo what someone mentioned below, if you're interested in solid wood furniture you should find a local woodworker.

Another edit and thought: I used to own a lot of IKEA furniture and as I've gotten older, have slowly replaced those pieces with items from Knoll, with custom pieces from local woodworkers, with a few pieces from the studios listed above. A lot of people are commenting on the cost, and yes they're expensive and could be considered luxury goods.

But if you like art and design and you care about quality, you save for what you want to buy. I wanted to be surrounded by great craftsmanship, so instead of buying "stuff" and instead of spending money on lots of subscriptions and services, or constantly upgrading phones and computers, I buy one piece of nice furniture every year. I believe the more you appreciate the things around you, the more they begin to influence your own work, and your sense of place.

I regularly see a lot of IKEA furniture on the side of the road and in dumpsters. I think this is the difference between buying "things" and having "possessions" but that's a discussion for another day.

535188B17C937432• 3 years ago

Why is there no way to save comments on HN? Or is there? I want to save this for one day when I can afford this all, haha.

kdmssn• 3 years ago

Click on the time of the comment and then you will see a favourite option

MisterTea3• 3 years ago

I keep a text file of interesting hn discussions/comments. I maintain a sort-of format where the URL goes on the first line and the next line is the article title and below that any key words then skip a line for the next. I have a directory full of text files with links sorted by topic. I have a command that just greps that directory and tells me the text file and line number.

pcurve2• 3 years ago

Even the cheaper ones are quite princely.

slg• 3 years ago

And these highlight the main reason why IKEA is still so successful. The apparent starting price for a bed appears to be $1800 on those sites (at least the ones in which I could easily find a price). Meanwhile IKEA has options under $200. I understand all the complaints that people have regarding the durability of IKEA furniture and how it is potentially getting worse, but replacing IKEA furniture every 2 years is still a more attractive deal for many people than replacing some higher quality stuff every 15-20 years.

krat0sprakhar2• 3 years ago

replacing IKEA furniture every 2 years is still a more attractive deal for many people than replacing some higher quality stuff every 15-20 years.

Especially true for those of us living in apartments and moving residences every 3-4 years

Brendinooo3• 3 years ago

What was astonishing to me is the resale value of IKEA stuff. We sold off a bunch of furniture when we moved a year ago and I think that the price I got for my PAX unit was somewhere close to what my parents paid for it for me like 25 years ago.

Used furniture is a weird market because it's hard to match buyers and sellers. But for whatever reason people seek out IKEA stuff. I've never had a problem moving it and have generally been happy with the prices I get

liotier3• 3 years ago

replacing IKEA furniture every 2 years

What the hell are you doing with your Ikea furniture ? I have stuff going towards twenty years, no problem.

oblio9• 3 years ago

Besides that: no thanks to solid wood. It's super heavy and annoying to move around, and I say that as a guy. A woman of a smaller build or a child that needs to move a bit of furniture will hate them even more. Especially stuff like chairs.

bluesummers5651• 3 years ago

To add to this, I've liked the Room & Board furniture I've purchased as well. It's pretty simple design-wise, but solid wood, American-made (if you care about things like that), and broadly available. But honestly, the nicest piece of furniture I have is something I commissioned a local cabinet maker to make. It was only marginally more expensive than what a comparable piece at R&B would cost, but was completely custom in a way that R&B could not be, and it was also nice to support local woodworkers.

blueridge3• 3 years ago

R&B is another good one, added to the list. And yes, local woodworkers are a great option!

audunw2• 3 years ago

There's a lot of people saying solid wood furniture is more sustainable. I seriously doubt that though. If you like solid wood, and you make sure to take care of it, then I think it's a good choice. As long as not too many of us do it at the same time.

Imagine how much hardwood you'd suddenly have to cut down if everyone started buying these instead of IKEA furniture.

You can use the price as a rough proxy for resource consumption. In my experience IKEA furniture lasts a good fraction of a lifetime. You can buy several for the price of one of these solid wood furniture, and I think you can also buy several before the resource impact is the same as well.

I'm honestly quite impressed with the engineering they're doing with cardboard these days. We have a coffee table and two wall shelves mounted below a TV.. and we have kids. They get treated badly, and they can take it. I hope to replace the coffee table with something nicer one day, but the IKEA one can get a second life in the basement.

The only thing I would have wished was solid wood is our dining table. The veneer is a bit damaged from moisture or heat. If it was solid wood we could've sanded and treated it.

I think the sustainable thing is a combination of IKEAs approach and solid wood. Every solid wood furniture bought will hopefully reduce the amount of trees we cut down over the long term, if they're well taken care of. Eventually it'll reduce the amount of IKEA-style furniture that has to be made. But right now that the population is still growing so much, and we need so much new furniture for new households, I suspect the best thing is to use the fastest growing wood and use as little as possible of it in the furniture.

ericpauley3• 3 years ago

Agreed, I think the complaints about IKEA sustainability is mostly just a luxury belief. IKEA furniture is cheaper because it uses fewer resources (especially less wood). When lightly used in a home environment a lot of it can last a very long time.

e15ctr0n• 3 years ago

The only thing I would have wished was solid wood is our dining table.

Try the IKEA JOKKMOKK. Made with solid pine and stained with clear lacquer. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/jokkmokk-table-and-4-chairs-ant...

dpierce9• 3 years ago

No Gomer Bolstrood?

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

These are, unfortunately, luxury goods. I don't want them to be. There was a time when they weren't. But they're now luxury goods. The masses have to suffer Ikea - it's all we can afford. The above stuff is for the upper classes.

SV_BubbleTime2• 3 years ago

The first link I clicked brought me to a $2000 bar stool. That's nice I'm sure, but I'm out.

I'll buy used.

gregschlom• 3 years ago

There was a time when they weren't.

I'm not sure if that's true. My impression is that furniture has always been very expensive, and it's only fairly recently (mid-20th century?) that mass manufacturing has enabled it to be cheap, with IKEA being one of the most well-known examples.

dnissley• 3 years ago

Suffer? Really?

matsemann2• 3 years ago

Go to any yardsale or scour online ads: people almost pay you to take their big old wooden furniture off their hands.

danielfoster2• 3 years ago

These are all stunning. Excellent craft is worth it. It’s beautiful when something lasts forever.

Maybe I’m too young (I don’t think so, I’m 32), but I have been impressed with how long some of my IKEA pieces have held up. Since IKEA products are so easy to disassemble and often modular, they are easy to buy and sell. I’ve bought countless used IKEA items over the years and sold nearly as many. These products are perfect for people who constantly move or have changing needs.

IKEA does not make throw-away furniture.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

I will add another thing - handmade solid wood furniture is never dimensionally accurate. So you can't mix and match, as much as you can with many IKEA pieces.

danwee• 3 years ago

Just clicked on the first link: $1225 for one chair (https://www.thejoinery.com/furniture/dining-chairs-dining-ro...). I have 4 Ikea STEFAN. Around $47 each. Been 4 years already and they are still intact. Sure, the quality of the Hayden is way better, but 26 times better? I don't think so.

Spivak2• 3 years ago

Or phrased differently you could replace your ikea chair 25 times over your lifetime and still come out ahead.

These kinds of pieces are generational purchases. They do save you money but on a very long timescale that you yourself likely won't realize.

bobchadwick• 3 years ago

This gets to the heart of the argument Christopher Schwarz makes in his book, The Anarchist's Design Book [1], which is that it's nearly impossible for people who aren't rich to buy high quality furniture that will last a lifetime. An alternative is to build it yourself. The Anarchist's Design book presents relatively simple plans for building high quality furniture without requiring a ton of experience or tools.

[1] https://lostartpress.com/products/the-anarchists-design-book

red-iron-pine3• 3 years ago

Curious about what we mean by "anarchism?" Read this short FAQ. It's probably not what you think.

presumably added at the bottom because people were expecting to download it for free...

dirtyid5• 3 years ago

high quality furniture that will last a lifetime

Other caveat being high quality furniture rarely last a life time, restoration / repair can cost more than normal furniture. Another consideration is some luxury furniture / design pieces don't perform that well to heavy every day wear. There's a lot of pieces in big homes / spaces that gets very occasional use.

SamuelAdams• 3 years ago

Who actually wants the same furniture for life though? People move houses often. In my state the average length of a 15/30 year mortgage is 5 years, meaning the homeowner either refinances or sells and moves to another home.

New home means new furniture, and if the old furniture doesn’t fit the new home’s style then sorry, it’s out and something else replaces it.

The idea of people living in the same house for 30-50 years is dead. IKEA understands this, so they create furniture that lasts the average length of a mortgage.

kajecounterhack• 3 years ago

https://www.gingkofurniture.com has plenty of stuff in the $400-2k range, and most of their pieces are also buy it for life. Solid hardwood (walnut) construction, steel-framed shelving, etc. They have physical locations in the bay area.

aimor• 3 years ago

Thanks for this list.

Buy it for life is right. I've inherited plenty of buy it for life furniture from family and friends, had some repaired and refinished, bought others off craigslist or estate sales etc, some are on their last legs or are too special to be anything but an heirloom as opposed to usable furniture. Of course things don't stay beautiful forever without care; kids (myself included, I damaged some nice furniture when little) are probably the most destructive force.

I still go back and forth (have a need for bookshelves right now) between the price tiers of Ikea's Billy, local used sales, and new wood furniture. But I've never regretted buying something nice.

JAlexoid28• 3 years ago

yes they're expensive and could be considered luxury goods

They are luxury goods.

We know well that melamine board furniture lasts a lifetime, and there's little need to have a $15k coffee table. Getting a local woodworker to build you anything larger than a pair of side tables is thousands of dollars, without even the material costs.

Your whole comment is a little detached from reality and reads very condescending.

asfasfo3• 3 years ago

Can anyone suggest something that is there anything reasonably priced? I'm willing to pay 5-10x IKEA prices, but most of the products here are 25x IKEA prices. Room and Board is the only place I see that is somewhat attainable on this list. Most of my IKEA pieces last a decade so there is no way I can economically justify these prices.

wazoox• 3 years ago

I have a 40 years old billy, the shelves are made of solid wood! IKEA quality has been dwindling for decades.

ericpauley3• 3 years ago

The lines have just shifted. The Hemnes is pine. I would imagine that adjusting for inflation it is likely cheaper than the Billy was when you bought it.

switch0074• 3 years ago

There is so little left to cut. Replacing wood veneer with foil? Man, that’s low.

I’d never buy furniture from them. Just smaller things like glasses and plants. They’re a shadow of what they used to be.

tap-snap-or-nap8• 3 years ago

The paper foil got me. I see down their vision going towards furniture made with cardboard boxes as an eco-friendly option

unwind• 3 years ago

I'm a bit saddened by this news, since making their products flimsier/lighter will surely make them feel worse.

Anyway, the very first paragraph has this:

ÄLMHULT, Sweden—Amid IKEA’s colorful staged living rooms, piles of umlaut-laden housewares and endless rows of flat-pack boxes is furniture that can have shoppers wondering: How does that chair cost only $35?

Which I think is really bad writing for a publication like the WSJ. Swedish does not have "umlauts". We have three letters more than the US English alphabet, but only two of them (Ä and Ö) have the double dots: the third has a ring (Å). These three are real first-class letters though, they are not "umlauted" (which means changed from some base letter due to grammar).

itsameta4• 3 years ago

The dots are indeed called umlauts, at least in English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umlaut_(diacritic)

ska2• 3 years ago

I think OP's contention was that in Swedish these are not diacritical marks, but different letters.

Symbiote4• 3 years ago

The dots when used in English are called a diaeresis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaeresis_(diacritic)

Otherwise, except when discussing German, I think "two dots" is much more common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_dots_(diacritic)

henrikschroder5• 3 years ago

That depends.

In English, ¨ is a diacritic mark called diaeresis, which indicates that a vowel is distinct, and shouldn't be diphthongized or dropped: Coöperation, Noël, Brontë.

In German, ¨ is a diacritic mark called umlaut, which transforms the vowels A, O, and U into their umlauted versions: Ä, Ö, and Ü. These characters are not distinct letters of the German alphabet, but belong to a special weird in-between class.

In Swedish, ¨ is not a diacritic mark, does not have a name, and is simply an integral part of the letters Ä and Ö, which together with Å are distinct letters of the Swedish alphabet. The dots aren't modifiers, they're not optional, Ä is not sort-of-an-A, it's as distinct from A as any other vowel, and its pronunciation is closer to E than A.

bjoli• 3 years ago

Only in languages where they are umlauts. Look at, for example, Ä and Umlaut-A: they have historically been written differently. They were simplified to mean the same thing in handwriting a long time ago, but as recently as in iso-8859-1 they made a conscious decision to merge them.

Unicode also makes a difference, but generally recommends the merged character.

mercutio2• 3 years ago

To non-linguist English speakers, languages with the same letters as the English alphabet plus a few more with two dots on top, are just referred to as English-letter-name with-umlaut.

This is incorrect, from a linguistic perspective, but it's absolutely the case that if I asked 10 of my friends to describe Ä, 9 of them would say "'A' with an umlaut".

The vernacular not matching expert terms of art never ceases to annoy people, but it's not really worth fighting, I don't think.

harry82• 3 years ago

it's not really worth fighting, I don't think.

Absolutely.

Yet it's hardly a secret either and something you would expect someone who graduated university writing for a relatively well known newspaper to be able to get right. It's trivial to most readers of English whether they got it right, sure. It's also trivial to get it right and they did not. It looks bad and casts bad light on the newspaper for accuracy and getting details correct. Needless to say there are plenty of details that may not be as trivial to get right but are non-trivial in their effect of your understanding of the story. How does something as batshit simple as this winding up smeared on the WSJ's face in such a nothing story affect the readers' estimate of how often they get important details wrong? That assessment is up to each reader but I'm pretty sure we can all agree it probably doesn't help much.

henrikschroder5• 3 years ago

A fun example of the opposite effect is that it took me forever to realize that Häagen-Dazs, the ice cream, is supposed to be pronounced HAH-gen-das, and not HEY-gen-das.

lutorm2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I always read it as Häh-agen-das as well.

rrdkent• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%84lmhult?wprov=sfla1

s1mon• 3 years ago

Constantly looking to shave pennies off of products is understandable from a business perspective, but as many are commenting, quality often suffers. With some household items - not just from Ikea - it seems like the race to the bottom leads to everything becoming so bereft of raw material that they are disposable. Try to buy simple things like a dishpan or dish rack, and most brands have become so flimsy that they don't last.

I really wish that Ikea would offer a sub-brand which is more premium. They did that many years ago. I have a dresser from the early '90s which is still in good shape. It was differentiated by design. materials and construction. It also cost a lot more than other similar items. Around that same time they sold a series of shelves/cabinets with aluminum extrusions for the corners, and some of their more dense particle board with premium veneers for the shelves/panels. It really competed with high end stuff from other contract furniture companies like Steelcase, Knoll, and Herman Miller.

Ikea no longer seems to be interested in competing on quality.

jwagenet• 3 years ago

IKEA has mid and high tier options in a number of categories. While certainly not necessarily comparable to premium mass-produced furniture brands, definitely a step up.

itronitron• 3 years ago

In my recent experience, when IKEA sells a product that is predominantly made of solid wood it tends to be durable, which is how I define quality. The particle board stuff is definitely hurting their brand from my perspective.

omnibrain• 3 years ago

Having shopped at Ikea for 20 years now there is one pattern I noticed: In general Ikea won‘t increase the price of an article, instead they would produce it cheaper and cheaper.

switch0074• 3 years ago

I’ve got a catalog from 4 years ago. They have had absolutely no problem raising prices /and/ cutting quality the past couple of years.

donatj2• 3 years ago

I have bought and assembled 6 billy bookcases one by one over the last 15 years and the drop in quality over time has been quite perceivable.

The latest one I assmeled used plastic locking mechanisms to keep the shelves in place instead of the metal of all my prior bookcases. Probably good enough, but doesn't inspire confidence.

donatj2• 3 years ago

I truly wish whoever downvoted me would give me an explanation of why. This has been my experience.

Do you disagree with my assessment? I can go take pictures of my individual bookshelves if you would like and show the gradual drop in quality if you would prefer.

clnq2• 3 years ago

I expect that people downvote these things based on emotion and not reason. It's been very perceivable that IKEA's quality has gone down over the years. Though it is a bit regional as ultimately quality is influenced by the local manufacturer. The quality of their furniture is better in Scandinavia than the UK, for example.

bedros• 3 years ago

basically, making ikea products fall apart in two years instead of 5 years. What a shame, just increase the prices slightly.

switch0074• 3 years ago

They’ve increased prices in loads of items the past few years too. And not just by a little bit

asciimov2• 3 years ago

Is enshitification endemic of stagnate wages, or is it due to investors seeking ever grater short term gains?

switch0074• 3 years ago

They’re a private company fwiw

local_crmdgeon2• 3 years ago

IKEA is structured as a Dutch nonprofit. There's no shares.

0xbadcafebee3• 3 years ago

I like driving around cities when it's moving time for college kids. You can pick up all sorts of great scrap wood left on the curb, mostly from IKEA parts. I had to stop picking it up because I amassed so much. I've made several tables and 3 bed frames.

didip• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is most apparent on their best-seller: Kallax.

Try lifting your old Kallax vs the new one. No, you are not suddenly turned into Captain America. It's the new Kallax that's suddenly became so light and hollow.

rtpg2• 3 years ago

Is the new one at least... kind of solid? I gotta say having my Kallax weigh less sounds nice if it doesn't fall apart

aceazzameen• 3 years ago

Interesting! I just got a new Kallax, but haven't put it together yet. I'll have to compare against my 10yr old ones.

theCodeStig• 3 years ago

IKEA furniture, is essentially temporary and disposable. Consider the environmental impact.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

keep prices down and profits up

There’s your problem right there. We are all getting a worse product from IKEA because they have to keep investors profits up.

They wrap this boot to the face in a lovingly quaint “scrappy engineers” story that’s supposed to make it seem like this is all unavoidable effects of some mysterious process.

We’re the authors of our own hell folks.

noelsusman• 3 years ago

What investors?

local_crmdgeon2• 3 years ago

IKEA doesn't have investors, it's actually structured as a Dutch nonprofit.

dragonwriter• 3 years ago

Per Wikipedia, at the top level there is a Dutch foundation and a Leichtenstein foundation, and a web of for- and non-profit orgs beneath them.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

So, per the article who is seeking profit?

I’m pretty sure Inter-IKEA has private shareholders

diebeforei485• 3 years ago

The only ikea item we managed to break (actually, bend) was a midbeam (SKORVA).

I'm surprised it lasted as long as it did! It broke in the third apartment, so it survived two moves. And it was just $15 to replace.

somewhat_drunk• 3 years ago

General FYI: Ikea furniture (like all particle board furniture) will be much more durable if you add a line of wood glue to the edges when building. It's a simple step that only takes a few extra minutes during construction, but the resulting furniture will last through many moves.

dcchambers• 3 years ago

I like Ikea but I usually avoid their cheaper lines and opt for the "higher end" stuff with real wood...sure it's usually just pine, but it seems to hold up a hell of a lot better and it's not that much more expensive. Plus natural wood is gorgeous.

Eg. Buy a Hemnes bookcase instead of a Billy. A ton more affordable than a custom walnut or oak bookcase from a local furniture maker if that is out of your price range, but will last practically as long.

squokko• 3 years ago

If you glue IKEA stuff together while you're assembling it, and attach it to the wall, it's as strong as you need it to be.

jacobp100• 3 years ago

I like IKEA. They’re very honest about their construction. They do some solid wood products, and some particle board products - and you’re never going to be confused what you’re buying

Also, all their packaging seems to be recyclable - including their food packaging. That’s something supermarkets in the UK aren’t even close to

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