IKEA Gets Deeper into the Woods | Hacker News Reader

IKEA Gets Deeper into the Woods

wsj.com

31 pointsfillskills21 comments

This story was wrongly buried by user flags. I'm guessing this was because of the WSJ paywall. This is not a legitimate use of flagging on HN.

Academic journals that are truly locked down are one thing, but nearly every media paywall has a standard workaround. This is the case with NYT, Economist, New Yorker, WSJ, and other sources. fillskills was entirely right to post this article, which is interesting and on topic.

It's fine to help other users get to read the article. It's not fine to take threads off-topic by complaining about paywalls.

When I have time, I'm going to update the FAQ about this, but anyone who wants to can read through the many previous discussions we've had about it [1]. As far as I'm concerned the question is settled: we're not going to impoverish HN by banning sources of good stories that are readable by everyone with known workarounds. Good stories are scarce enough as it is.

1. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=...

Around the paywall https://archive.is/qRnWv

Off-topic but slightly interesting:

Apparently archive.is blocks Finnish IP addresses. Additionally, my ISP does not even resolve an A record for archive.is. No idea why.

Wikipedia has this[1] (sourced [2]):

> On July 21, 2015, the operators blocked access to the service from all Finnish IP addresses, stating on Twitter they did this in order to avoid escalating a dispute they allegedly had with the Finnish government, that they refused to provide additional information on.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.is#Worldwide_availabil...

[2]: https://twitter.com/archiveis/status/623524336184524800

My impression is that IKEA products already use a bare minimum of wood. If they make things even thinner, there won't be much reason to shop there instead of just buying the cardboard stuff at Wal-Mart.

I've stopped buying IKEA products for this reason. They are never durable. The unit surfaces get pitted and discoloured easily and things warp over time. It's crap basically. I have to replace it all every 4-5 years.

The last cycle I threw some cash at some quality solid wood products. They're a better investment.

IKEA has plenty of solid wood furniture, but style-wise these items are very different from the fiberwood crap.

I've had quite a lot of good furniture from there, which has lasted more than a decade. I think they carry crap and they carry things which are well made and well designed.

There does recently seem to be more crap, though. I tried to buy a floor lamp from there a couple of months ago, and they seemed to be basically not charging enough to be able to make their designs to a decent standard. If you're going to make a floor lamp for £30-40, just make it simple, don't put in a lot of hinges which aren't properly secured or balanced, or snake-like fittings which make loud groaning noises every time they are moved. Ironically I got something less ambitious and better designed from the local anonymous hardware store. Disappointing to see a company like IKEA which is supposed to be all about thought-out industrial design making mistakes like that.

Yes definitely. I have a floor lamp from them as well and the metal was so thin it folded the first time it was moved so now it's a metal and duct tape lamp :)

They're a better investment.

They're a different investment. Furniture (outside of antiques) has practically no resale value. If you move around a lot, and value your freedom and mobility over most other things, Ikea is pretty much perfect. It's designed to be for the short term.

What are people doing to their IKEA furniture? Mine have seen six apartments in 10 years and are still basically new. Never understood why they have a reputation for "falling apart".

Only Target and Walmart furniture have fallen apart on me--usually within less than a year.

How much do you spend moving your quality wood furniture? Your moving budget is my IKEA budget every time I move (I donate my still-very-much-intact IKEA furniture).

As a Romanian, I'm livid. We've had huge problems with illegal deforestation in the last couple of decades.

https://www.google.com/search?q=romania+deforestation

Ikea say "operating forests would help it secure long-term access to sustainably managed wood." ie. replanting and harvesting, not deforesting.

I'm not entirely skeptical of how ethical their exploitation will be conducted, I'm just raising the point that we're a country with heavily affected (ex-)forests. Moreover, there's a rich recent history of external interests being facilitated by our ultra-corrupt government, to rather devastating effects.

Vertical integration is so passé. Now you've got two problems, you'll end up competing with your other wood suppliersor supply your furniture competitors. Using the profit from your core business to prop up the weak one; whichever way round that ends up being.

The world just spent the last decade de-integrating.

I would agree with you if it were a smaller company, but at IKEA's volume, it does make sense.

Also, it's "mainstream" again, with Apple as the trendsetter.

http://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Vertical-Integration-2...

http://business.time.com/2012/03/16/how-apple-made-vertical-...

Delta Airlines owns a refinery, Tesla is building their own Battery factory; Vertical integration is alive and well.

Tell that to the supply line risk manager at Boeing or Airbus. They might look like they are not vertically integrated, but the level of control they have muddies the water.

Control is not ownership, many supply lines have SLAs with very tight KPIs.

Boeing and Airbus do not build their own engines for instance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com