IKEA to discontinue its annual catalog, ending a 70-year run
architecturaldigest.com
architecturaldigest.com
Can you even imagine a stack of one million catalogs?
That's space, trees, plants, mammals, birds, insects, mushrooms, ... all being squeezed for a glossy catalog, most of which will get thumbed through once or twice and sent to the landfill to rot.
These catalogs do not biodegrade well, by the way, because they're not just paper.
I love paper books, and I enjoyed browsing this catalog just like many others in this thread, and yet I don't think I will miss this one. Hopefully, other thick glossy catalogs will follow suit.
Production of catalogs like this squeezes our biome, and if we don't turn back, it will pop, and we'll be left with only enough resources for a small fraction of us to survive.
- Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey
Books are not just decadent, they're also a reliable store of information which cannot be erased or altered easily without our knowledge.
There's immense and irreplaceable value in paper books, and I've taken to collecting the best ones.
I just don't think there's much value in this particular one.
I love paper books as well, but I think the authors have prophetically captured the inevitable. Cutting down forests to only add tangibility to our bytes just isn't worth it.
I agree that it's inevitable that things move that way - my only paper books in recent years have been to complete my collection of Ian Banks because that particular edition looks gorgeous, and Stålenhag's art books. I don't anticipate buying more paper copies of novels or textbooks unless there are books I can't find in digital version.
But at the same time, I just published a scifi novel and was surprised at how large a proportion of sales are still made up by paperback (not exactly selling millions, so it's not exactly a large sample of the market). It seems like it will take a long time before paper books become unusual to the point of being considered decadent.
Many, many books are being discarded these days, so I don't have to buy new, or buy at all.
My old hometown's system used to do a semi-regular culling at the yearly mini arts & crafts fest in the park. They'd lay out 5 long rows of tables and cover them in old books that had to be retired. You could take as much as you could carry for a donation of any size.
I used to go when I was in my teens and had two dollars to rub together, and I still go back now in my 30's if I'm in town (with more of a donation). I've found some real gems.
Hardbacks are more likely to last, and premium heirloom hardbacks = special print runs with special materials and extra assembly effort - are most likely to survive.
But for what? Most heirloom hardbacks are better-than-average novels for well-heeled fans and collectors, not a complete guide to rebuilding civilisation.
I'd be all for an apocalypse-beating Self-Study Handbook of The Important Stuff We Worked Out and Did, but good luck finding a publisher to fund what would be a massive project.
Other than binding, which can be re-done pretty easily, paperbacks are readable after 50-100 years.
The paper may yellow, but crumbling takes a bit longer.
Although I have PDFs of all of them, so it doesn't matter. The fact that I can change the font size to make them legible now does, to me at least.
The hardbacks are still fine. (Except for the print size.)
[0] "The Knowledge" by Lewis Dartnell
And I have several books published in the nineteen thirties and forties that would serve well to reboot civilization having comprehensive instructions for building all sorts of necessary machinery, buildings, clothes, etc. There were many such books with titles such as "Everything Within" and "The Handyman's Complete Self-Instructor".
There is no need for a publisher to fund a massive project; most of what is needed is already available on paper and increasing amounts of it have been scanned so that anyone with a laser printer can make their own permanent copy.
Of course those 1930s and 40s books won't tell you how to build a modern computer but they do tell you how to build a radio without needing to build a chip fab first.
And it seems that there is sufficient interest (presumably as conversation pieces) for some such books to be republished: https://bookshop.org/books/the-handyman-s-complete-self-inst...
1) Endless knowledge
2) It's a bloody fortress
Kidding aside, though, and also being one that maintains a small library I have to agree. Most of them are not so cheap as to actively degrade so fundamentally as to be unreadable. Maybe old dime-store dramas. I mean, unless you've left them open in the sunlight for 50 years.
They're not a guide for rebuilding civilization. They're something that can last through whatever dark time you're considering in some semi-forgotten corner, so the next civilization can learn about and study what came before. And honestly, they don't need to last the whole time, but rather only until thins recover enough that you start to have copyists, etc.
What digital storage do you have that will last that long? A few CDs would in the ideal case (but most are not that grade). I'm not clear how long SSDs will last. Magnetic tape becomes brittle and single read in about 30 years as we know from history.
The only advantage of digital is IF you care at all it is easy/cheap to copy to something new.
If you actually want books to last a long time, they must be stored under controlled conditions by an actual archivist.
It happened back in 1859, but it's effects were limited as the only susceptible tech was telegraph systems.
Most paper uses a very decent amount of recycled paper, has ti actually. To the point the industry faced issues last Q1 when demand went down and there wasn't enough recycled paper on the market. Trees are grown explicitly for paper production, and are regrown in the same forests. Net forest losses are mainly due to farming, e.g. in the Amazon region. Energy wise, paper production offers great opportunities to balance the grid.
Most paper, at least in Europe, is actually recycled.
And electronics do have there issues as well. They consume raw earthes, are consumed as well, end up in land fills and also have quite extensive supply chains and CO2 foot prints. And they consume electricity, which has to produced. And we are nowhere near the necessary levels of renewables.
I do support getting rid of useless paper consumption, it just not as straight forward as it seems.
Now, let's talk about the other components:
the ink (petrochemicals, for the most part)
the production, transportation, and containers for the ink
the runoff into our biosphere from the ink production
the transportation of the paper to the printing facility
the binding (glue)
the transportation of the catalogs to the stores
the plastic wrap and other packaging for the catalogs
the labor put into it (perhaps those people could be paid to rest instead? probably better for everyone all-around)
Did I miss anything?
How many dead, displaced, or injured animals do you think that is per catalog? How many humans harmed by exposure to manufactured poison? How many gallons of diesel extracted, transported, refined, transported again, and burned? How many dozen pieces of trucks, trains, and container ships mined, produced, and worn down? Is it still better than viewing the same catalogs online on an already existing computer screen?
Every single artefact produced by our system has a similar footprint. It's not just money cost. And I think it's worth considering.
I am not saying pushing the catalogue to digital is a net negative, no idea how that could even be reliably quantified. Just that paper and print production is by no means as negative to the environment as is believed.
I'd say having such forests which are relatively unmolested for several years before being harvested are less negative than clearing them out and placing say farms in their place. So, overall it's not the biggest thing to go after, but then, I'm no expert.
[1] also depends greatly on what type of cutting we're talking about. I would say it's clear that illegal and / or legal but permanent deforestation is a negative. Above, I'm talking about forests which are planted and re-planted to obtain their wood.
https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_1260x709_crop_center-cent...
You don't go out too much, do you? In my municipality we have wolves - at a population density of 214 ppl/km² no less. Since there's no recorded killings of livestock by wolves and they have to eat something, it's save to assume we're OK on boars and deer, too. Not to mention the rabbits, hares, badgers, various songbirds, birds of prey, insects and other critters I encounter on a daily basis when walking the dog. Through the local woods. Which are very much filled with wildlife.
edit: I got the population density wrong - it's actually much lower if the entire area is considered, not just the town :) the correct figure including all land would be ~45 ppl/km².
You missed coatings, which can include minerals or plastics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coated_paper
One of the reasons they do not degrade well.
I hate to think how much junk mail I receive every year. We use a 14 gallon recycling bin and it's about half full of waste paper mail EVERY WEEK in the USA. Catalogs, flyers, credit card offers, loan offers, etc. It's disgusting and I can't opt out.
It is likely not helpful if IKEA gets to enjoy the image of an environmentally-friendly eneterprise based on a token gesture. Many companies engage in such gestures to get themselves off the hook for their involvement in problematic practices.
I'm not saying that it's IKEA's fault that people buy throw-away furniture, or that the population is growing etc, but still.
But, I'll take any environment win I can get at this point.
And how would someone who spends money reduce their complicity?
Just throwing this out there -- it's not like all of this stuff is ending in the trash. This dresser is over 30 years old now.
This is why I have not bought a new computer in 10+ years, and have only used hand-me-downs for the last 8, with a similar track record on mobile devices.
However, if the book in question is one which will be kept for a while, actually read or referred to, perhaps it is a more worthwhile endeavor?
Compare that to the other end of the spectrum, e.g. supermarket ads, most of which do not even leave the plastic bag which carries them into someone's front yard and straight into the trash.
But taken to the logical conclusion, that argument can look rather hypocritical, for example why is the discussion about paper vs electronic catalogs for buying furniture and not about why we even need beds and chairs to begin with, while people in japan are fine w/ futons[0] and kotatsu[1]?
One can take the argument to extremes and argue that amazonian forests burning in Brazil are partly due to you and I existing and needing to eat and wanting to have kids who need to be fed.
It's clearly a slippery slope, and if one draws the moral line to make others bad, while conveniently claiming to be "kosher" themselves, that's not really a convincing line.
So I don’t think it would qualify.
Similarly, kotatsu don't require chairs.
You should see how compact things are in Japan :)
However, my aim is not to take it to the extreme, nor to suggest that we shouldn't eat. It's merely to introduce a measure of "seventh generation" thinking and consideration into buying habits, beyond the amount of funds it takes to procure something.
If I take it further than sounds comfortable to you in my own life, it is only show what is possible, and to shift the needle of normal a little bit towards the direction of prudence and restraint.
Do we still need food? Of course! Do we need a place to sleep comfortably? Of course we do, and I do not suggest othrwise.
But what about new clothes when we already have quite a few sets which are still good, or a new pair of shoes when we still have a couple which are just a bit scuffed?
My argument is to consider the full systemic impact of buying those items, something no one else will do for us, before going through with it. If you consider this idea next time you are about to buy something, that each {dollar} spent comes back around in so many ways to harm us and our close relatives on the biological tree of live, then I will consider my writing a success.
I'm speaking to the idea of in-groups vs out-groups. For example, think about veganism and how their activism generally falls on deaf ears outside of their own circles. Bringing supply chain arguments to this discussion is very similar in the sense that they are strictly true but easily dismissible by someone who doesn't share the same set of values/priorities.
The line of argument might potentially even be self-defeating, for example, if the takeaway is that electronic catalogs > paper catalogs, never mind the rare earth mines and sweatshops in china and that drawers in ikea furniture still invite further consumerism. That's a very very different takeaway than "geez I should buy less stuff".
Trees grown explicitly for paper still require energy to plant, manage, cut and still represents a habitat loss. Europe has absolutely obliterated its forests. Anything that isn't a net gain is a major issue at this point.
Norway has actually increased the number of trees in the last 100 years.
In 1925 the volume of Norway’s forests was 300 million cubic meters of wood. Today it adds up to 900 million cubic meters.
Source: https://sciencenorway.no/enviroment-forest-forskningno/norwe...
As someone who lives in a smaller European country, I can empathize. At least on HN, it seems like both Europeans (in the regional sense) and non-Europeans are guilty of this. However, while the parent claim may or may not be accurate in this case, I think the use of "Europe" can reasonably be interpreted as referring to the region in aggregate, just as North America or Oceania might be used.
My larger problem with the parent and GP comments is that they both make specific claims about "Europe" that aren't self-evident without any citations.
Also, at the risk of moving the goalpost, having more trees than some arbitrary point in time isn't particularly reassuring. In central Europe, at least, 1925 would have been near an all-time low. The deforestation in central and northern Europe has been going on for millennia (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18646-7)
As wth everything, hyper industrialisation didn't do anything good. Sustainability used to be a hallmark of forestry. If we could just go back to that, and adopt it to maximize CO2 capture, it would be great. As would be going back to pre-industrial animal farming, better for the animals, better for the environment, better for the farmers and better meat.
We have a great deal of logging going on in temperate rainforests and there are whole swaths of the food chain that require moss growing on old growth trees. Clearcutting kills all of this. So does leaving a few trees intact, which is seen as some sort of improvement to conservation. It is not. Everything dies, it just dies slower. Most of the flora and fauna are adapted to full forest cover and high humidity. A copse of trees does not provide any of this. Summer comes and everything dries out.
We are still in need of a very different process for creating paper products. Fishing exclusion zones are an interesting model, but fish can move a lot farther than ferns, and a hell of a lot farther than moss and the habitat they provide. We may end up having to leaving a considerable amount of land intact (larger blocks, closer to everywhere) to avoid tree farm situations.
I some cases they don't even provide the same amount of carbon capture because of all the energy spent on irrigation that wouldn't be necessary without the groundwork they do to make harvesting the trees easier.
Yeah more paper doesn't equal less trees, but it does equal less forests because you can't grow a real forest if you are constantly irrigating and harvesting trees.
This paper mill was a recycling paper mill and the cost to produce acceptable standard paper was enormous. It used an enormous amount of gas to feed it's huge boilers producing steam, it even had it's own water turbine generators fed by the local river it was built alongside to produce electricity. It supplemented this with electricity from the grid which was even more expensive. It's biggest customer I'm fairly sure was McDonalds
Pulp was shipped in from Norway because again it was cheaper, at that time 100% recycled paper was not profitable and pulp from the UK was too expensive. When the company went into administration most of it's equipment which was old even at that time was bought by companies from China.
This mill was old, dating back to 1880 and it's infrastructure was part of the reason of it's demise. But there were 2 other paper mills in the same small town that eventually met the same demise, one being a much more modern construction, however it lasted longer by specialising in more profitable products such as tissue.
The paper industry is not carbon efficient, it will be much more efficient than it used to be but it still takes a huge amount of energy to produce. In lower volume it could be but consumerism dictates it isn't, it's why China is the largest paper making country in the world now.
I do have some fond memories working there even though it was hard work, at christmas time when the mill would shutdown it was absolutely freezing and doing a 12 hour shift on boxing day working inside a 5 storey high boiler was maybe not so pleasant. There were some wonderful quirks about the place, where the turbine generators were you could climb below the workshop floor where the bypass outflow was and you'd find one or 2 people sitting on wooden girders above the water fishing on their lunch break
Recycling is terrible too, you waste tons of fresh water to wash out the color and contaminate it with soap and all that toxic colors, and the glossy paper is even worse because it's normally not recyclable, so it's made to carton or burned.
Great! A new carbon capture method that also provides utility! I’ll take 40M please.
> 40 million copies of a thick catalog with glossy pages means a couple shittons of not just trees but petroleum and petrochemicals for production, distribution, and disposal. Every year!
- What about about daily printed newspapers?
- What about shop brochures that we receive weekly in the mailbox?
- What about toilet paper and derivates?
I can't understand people congratulating the discontinuation of an yearly book (arguably an historic document) instead of focusing one order of magnitude higher.
For what it's worth, I don't use toilet paper for its intended purpose, and I bet my butt is way cleaner than yours if you do. :)
I'm not sure why you are so critical of applauding one good thing just because other bad things are still in place.
I never understood the idea of privation being considered progressive. It isn’t progress to set the thermostat to a more uncomfortable temperature in order to save energy. It isn’t progress to have massive grid outages because windmills froze — windmills that are sitting atop many lifetimes of oil and natural gas reserves. It isn’t progress to freeze today because someone is theorizing that Tuvalu is on the cusp of sinking. Yet Tuvalu is growing in size instead of sinking but our policies still feature Chicken Little fear-mongering as a tool of control.
Sitting in a frozen-windmill-induced blackout in sub freezing temperatures for day two in Houston of all places makes me extremely irritated that the reason we have a blackout is because the hysterical anti-carbon crowd is afraid of a catastrophe that we’ve been promised since Al Gore’s inaccurate film. [1] A “catastrophe” being used in a similar vein as the war in Eastasia. Or was it Eurasia? Kind of hard to remember now given that new printed books are being replaced by digital because forgotmypw17 is worried about the carbon footprint of ink.
- https://www.chron.com/news/article/Texas-blackouts-fuel-fals...
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Tex...
This is just the first source I found on google to quote, but if houstonchronicle isn't a trustworthy news source let me know. It seems like all forms of energy suffered from a lack of winterization. To me, it seems the issue is not that renewable energy was depended upon, but rather that the whole system was unprepared for a cold snap like this.
> But the vast majority of energy the state generates is through natural gas. In October 2020, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that renewables generated 22% of the state's energy, while gas generated 51.8%.19 hours ago
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas/are-frozen-wind-turbines-to-...
I don't recall claiming such a thing. I'm sharing what I do and why, and if anyone wants to use my knowledge they're welcome to.
Sorry about the blackout, and any role I have inadvertently played in it.
No offense, there are many places around the world where blackouts are a regular everyday (or even every day) occurrence. Perhaps, you can give them a thought in an idle moment.
How did Texans manage to screw up windmills? The ones across the lake from me work perfectly fine all winter long, despite much colder winters.
I'm guessing they cheaped out on basic preparedness measures for this sort of thing, and clearly across the whole grid, not just renewables.
But I recently decided to switch to digital. The paper keeps piling up, and I increasingly find myself reading the news on their app.
Pretty simple solution, should be standard everywhere.
Did you miss the memo where hordes of people drive their trucks to IKEA and buy furniture that’s designed to be affordable by the middle class, costs an enormous amount of energy to produce and recycle and has a huge carbon footprint?
But never mind those things, catalog is paper so it makes it easy to market your argument to tree huggers.
The gas consumption alone to drive to IKEA dwarfs the energy required to make and print catalogs.
Just don’t go to IKEA and next time they won’t print as many! Problem solved. And you’ll save gas too.
IKEA catalogs are culture. It’s like saying let’s close down the Louvre museum because it’s consuming too much energy and inviting people to travel to Paris wasting more energy.
The furniture and its procurement is only the next logical step in the conversation.
Thinking and talking about this stuff is how I myself went from buying Ikea furniture to no longer doing so.
I think that without having these kinds of conversations and perpetuating them we have little hope.
I don’t shop at IKEA for similar reasons and I have also cut down Amazon purchases for random things that I can do without.
I think I was being too harsh, but I am sad that the catalogs are going away. They’re such a big part of IKEA’s contribution to culture that it’s carbon footprint can be forgiven.
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2010/04/16/toilet-paper-...
I haven't used an actual bidet in a while, but I honestly find it hard to fathom not washing my butt after pooping now that I've started doing it.
TP is just smearing it around...
The basic method is to keep washing it and rinsing it off and then washing off my hand, until I no longer feel poop or anything resembling it on my butt. Be gentle. No soap on the butt, that will dry it out. (As I mentioned in other posts, I don't use soap anywhere besides my hands.)
I then keep washing it, occasionally washing off my hand. When I can rub my butt with my hand it comes back not smelling like poop at all, I consider my butt to be clean.
If you look at animals, they do something similar, though they have to lick it clean. I consider myself very fortunate and blessed to not have to do that. :)
Afterwards, I wash my hands, get dressed, and then wash my hands again.
After you're done wiping as thoroughly as you will, run your hand or another piece of toilet paper through your butt and smell it.
The stack would reach from earth to ISS multiple times.
2) What do you think the impact is of poorly constructed IKEA furniture that lasts some small fraction of time of massive wood furniture.
If you want to go off, then go off on the fact that our governments support the creation of throwaway products rather than long lasting products.
I can't do anything about what our governments support. I can do something about what I support and what I am complicit to.
What if we call it "carbon sequestration" instead? :)
You can start on Monday!
You need a fast internet connection. And a fast computer. Even your older iPhone probably can’t handle the online catalog anymore. After a few pages, you just give up.
But with a paper catalog, you can put it down. Circle it. Fold it. Rip pages out. Write on it. Then discard it. You can rifle through the pages, and dream of how you want your home to be laid out.
Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history.
maybe kids now are doing it online?
Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head.
And if IKEA were to do it, they can just add shopping feature so the customer could purchase the furniture after trying it out inside their own room. That totally sounds like a killer app!
I wonder if there's anything like that already on the market.
It exists. The IKEA Smart app (from IKEA itself).
iOS only though: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ikea-place/id1279244498
I don't know if they made it generally available, but I know IKEA made a demo/beta app that did just that.
Now, over the past 5 years or so we're seeing online tech magazines move into print[0], record labels racing to get back up to speed for vinyl printing[1], and "lo-fi" looks and sounds and devices taking up a larger and larger space in pop culture[2].
If anything, I get the sense that the younger generations are seeing the value in attention and peace, and are moving in directions that afford them more of that—or at least control over that in their own lives and thoughts.
The general attitude, at least as far as I've discerned from my own observations, has been that "everything has it's optimal place" rather than adopting one tech to rule them all.
[0] https://store.increment.com
[1] https://longlivevinyl.net/2018/07/30/pressing-concerns-the-n...
[2] I don't have a nice summary for this one. It's just everywhere I look.
As with most things, I gather humanity is continually optimizing for itself. And what that looks like is what most gamblers usually get wrong because our foresight is often just that limited—especially when the result is going back to something most people thought we were done with. We are just a bunch of monkeys acting strangely, after all.
It's not about "retro", it's about ephemera and ritual and appreciation.
Certainly, dedicated fans of music exist in all aspects of human culture and not just western ...hipsterdom.
Without a doubt real-time video sharing and VR/AR will colour our world and help shape the future. They already have.
But that's not the point I was making. It's that, without certain knowledge of the future many people are willing to generalize and write off "old technology" in a fleeting way and without reflection.
Upon further reflection (using the music industry as an example), something like a vinyl music record was optimized for human attention and appreciation of a certain type of artwork. The industry, beginning in the 80's through the early 2000's, figured people would only care for convenience, and "good-enough" quality.
The current market forces have shown them to be wrong in their assumption that was the sum of what made music listening and purchases worthwhile. In reality, the experience from end-to-end really shaped the value of it.
From the sensual aspects of browsing a record store—smells, feeling, sociability, exposure to new art—to taking the physical object home, opening it, and performing the ritual of setting it on the turntable and tuning a system to play it back to your pleasure.
A lot of that was lost in the novelty of being able to carry your favourite songs everywhere in your pocket. The industry adapted, began to shut down old production facilities and retire old machinery.
When the novelty wore off and people were seeking more of an experience and less commodity the industry was not prepared for it.
It's getting there now. And I think we've ended up with what's approaching the best of all possible worlds: we've got convenience when we want it, and a selection of encompassing experiences for those who appreciate them.
The big mistake was the same big mistake humanity will make over and over again as it optimizes for itself: hubris. Illustrated by: "We've learned something new and incredible! Well now we know everything."
We never do, of course. But regardless, barring some forced eternal austerity or all-consuming catastrophe, humanity continues to optimize for itself always narrowing on on the mean good (often exercising a range of potential outcomes along the way from inconsequential to horrendous).
Relating to the larger subject at hand: paper is optimal in so many ways and the environmental aspects become only technical problems to be solved, not philosophical ones about whether or not it's worth it. Being so ready to erase something like that and force humanity onto tablet computers or some other novel technology is such a fine illustration of hubris it's almost trite.
Yes, I meant this in a generation-period sense. For 10-20 years AR/VR will be the fad that this kid will run for until they grow up. But it may also be strong enough to shift the culture long term.
I feel the same about 'old' not being lesser than new. Many spoke about how strange this feeling is. How limited 8bit games were full of wonders, weird illustrations. Yes the feeling of browsing small or big stores for items (music, books or else).. it's all part of our lives and 24/7 digital nomad with all of spotify.. doesn't compensate for this somehow.
I spend a lot of time reading about old tech. Sometimes I'm astonished but the ingenuosity or beauty (log slider rules are my favorite computing device now). I powered an old tape drive and the mechanics and sound felt special.. and more fun than the latest tech that is so invisible to our sense. I smile watching how tape decks were made, trivial tech (bits of metal, holes and springs) yet it's not less complex than a program.
I think the best we can really do is look at each successive generation's cultural adoption. Besides something like vinyl, there are many phenomena that persist in spite of being "outdated". I mean, a car will get us somewhere faster, but people still ride horses for other reasons—and for reasons that a car will never be able to even emulate.
Unless you know the name, then search works (as long as you're willing to scroll through 150 totally different items with that name).
* is everything in the picture included * what are all the possible exterior dimensions of the product * what are the specifications of the products down to all the specifications which make you choose one product over another
The saddest part is, lately it's been impossible to find this data on the manufacturers website as well. Basic things like how many nits does the TV have, how big does the front panel need to be for the dishwasher etc.
When you login, there are two types of accounts you can log into. Ikea and Ikea Family. These are shown as tabs, and the tab labels are faint. The login screen defaulted to the Ikea Family, so my individual login never worked, again because the labeling wasn't clear.
It wasn't until I was ready to reset my pw that I carefully looked at every screen element and noticed the tabs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeloBind
>It is possible to take a soft covered Velo-bound book, remove the old binding and cover, and re-bind it with a hard cover, which may be pre-embossed for more a more impressive appearance. This rapid up-grade was the cause of the short-lived motto "Soft to hard in 30 seconds!" That was first done when the firm was located in Sunnyvale, California.
Spent a good half hour looking for the manual online, only to remember Ikea manuals are all pictures. I found the manual and was reminded of this. About to give up, I took a risk, and thankfully bought the right sized key. Allen wrenches are made in both Imperial and Metric scales; Ikea, being Swedish, meant correctly picking metric.
I later looked through the manual, and on the 2nd to last page, it documented the correct key size.
Which doesn't exist here. Guess I should've specified austria before.
- "memories"
- "as a teenager"
- "decided against picking one up"GP has fond memories of a commercial brand, for a company, that should be priceless. He even intend to keep a catalog on his bookshelf, his kid will grow with an IKEA ad, for a company, that should be priceless.
Except that there is no such thing as "priceless" for a company. And they probably put a price tag on that, and decided that the "childhood memories" value is not worth the costs.
Not so much for continuing to print new ones.
(the certificate has expired today; I’m trying to find who to alert about that)
8% isn't huge, but it contributed to the majority of Sainsbury's overall growth in the period, and it's a massive turnaround for Argos given it's revenues have basically stayed about the same level for a decade.
In 2020 this increased from 19% to 28%, from £76b to £99b [1]
For Argos sales to only be up 8% in 2020, or £320m, isn't good, it took just 1.3% of the extra online sales. Remember also that Argos (on the whole) remained open for collection during the lockdowns inside of Sainsburys.
[0] https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/retailindust...
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/315506/online-retail-sal...
He. I had a bout where I spent waaaaay too much time and effort hunting down the precise same variant of the Risk board game that I had as a kid, only to not play it once since I got it. The old edition I looked for had star-shaped playthings instead of the symbolic cannons etc that are used now.
Now I just have to find Drakborgen (re-release of the 1985 edition kickstarter here, apparently :) : [0]) and Battle cars [1].
[0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fandrake/drakborgen [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2368/battlecars
It's just nostalgia and consumerism I guess.
Stock is also low in the Portland store, but even the few items available can't be purchased online and shipped to me. I've tried to order a number of things recently and they won't ship anything to my house.
Phone is not available because their people are working from home (this is entirely a solvable problem...), there's no email and the chat channels are so overwhelmed that it takes a week for them to respond.
This is not a great experience when you received nothing and your delivery is marked as "delivered a week ago" in a completely borked status page.
- Shipping options disappear and reappear randomly when refreshing the shopping cart
- some items just cannot be bought online for no clear reason (baking spatulas cannot, cooking spatulas can)
- Several packages arrived completely smashed open, and returning them involved bringing them "back" to the nearest IKEA which wasn't particularly fun with 35kg of furniture and no car.
If this is how bad it looks from the outside I can only imagine what it’s like working there.
still limited to things available in the local ikea, you can not mix "online" available and local available stuff...
I think there's a pretty clear reason. During normal circumstances, those items are not sold online, because they specifically WANT you to go to a warehouse. If you're looking for a couch or a table, it doesn't matter than much, that's deliberate shopping. The smaller items, those lead to impulse purchases.
Even tried going to Ikea to just get a frying pan, or a bath mat? You'll end up buying 10 more items, because: Hey, it's cheap, and the drive was 30 minutes the wrong way, might as well stock up.
> (...) You'll end up buying 10 more items
This is also sort of a meme. I have taken trips to IKEA maybe 30 times in my life, and I walked out of there with exactly what was on my shopping list (or less, because the items sucked or were out of stock) 95% of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BUDwj_mXKE&ab_channel=Movie...
I got saved by this not long ago. Needed a fridge the next day after moving into a new apartment. Was prepared to spend the day cycling to IKEA, buy the fridge and rent a car, get it all the way home, deliver the car and bike back. But then the website borked and let me choose next day express carry inside for 0,- saving me the trouble of carrying the fridge up stairs, renting a car etc.
They had converted their entrance and exit "lobbies" in to a zone where carts of items were prepped and after they confirm your order they'd just roll the cart with your order out of the door and leave you to take it from there.
Obviously you have to be prepared for heavier items, etc, but it was fast.
That said, I had some less urgent stuff to get, and ordered online, took 3 weeks to even process/ship (though i knew that in advance)
Does US stores also have the ability to pick items up from a warehouse next to their stores? Btw. how is this option also a paid one is beyond me.
This is unfortunate as they have a really cool offer of smart devices (lights, remotes, battery powered blinds, etc), which by default are not online (can be connected with things like google now but it's limited to local physical gate device by default). It's hard to actually buy all of these in one place, you have to hunt.
That's because every IKEA store is it's own warehouse. Everything you can see is the stock. There is only a small part where you can store stuff. So, instead of you running around and picking stuff from the shelves, an employee has to do it. It's basically a "convenience fee", because it's more expensive for IKEA to collect it for you then you collecting it. I'm not here to judge, though...
Also in Poland availability is different when I try to buy same thing online, check if it's present in local store, or order the same item to be picked up by myself from warehouse next to store.
It's even weirder! Sometimes I order things that are "present in my local store" with transportation, but the actual transportation is made from a central warehouse in different part of the country. So IKEA's "availability" is clearly a concept very different from what client might think.
> So, instead of you running around and picking stuff from the shelves, an employee has to do it.
Here warehouses are usually buildings next to the actual store. So in either case employee has to pick it up from warehouse, but with "pick up from warehouse yourself" option they don't need to transport it to the store next by. I still have to pay for that extra.
It's just weird.
IKEAs online experience is glossy but horribly non-functional, agreed :/ Had that experience in Sweden as well. There is simply no way to buy something which isn't in stock in the local warehouse either, their support actually told me to "try to buy it every day".
I went to the Ikea in Brooklyn back in November... in that store because of limited space they actually put up a tent in the parking garage for fulfillment. It just worked awkwardly.
Other than that, the magic of a place like Ikea is they source from a global market and make it magically appear. In 2020/2021, the magic is broken because global supply chains are broken. In my own business, I have about 18 people working on sourcing various commodities, where as in 2019 we had 4 doing the same job.
It's my understanding that the extra fee pays for time not spent in IKEA's alley (click) and the preparation of your purchases (collect).
IMHO, their focus is the in-store experience and have an online offering because they feel they have to but they never wanted to develop it too much.
Even their "click and collect" service is quite bad in my experience (but maybe that was that particular store): It's not well organised in-store, the collection area looks a mess, and the employees are uncaring.
That is astounding at a time when anyone with a free website whacked together in a no-code site-builder can drop in an e-commerce widget and have a first rate online shopping experience for customers, with a "cart," check-out, payment, etc.
Even when I was willing to shop in person, Ikea's tech was a frustrating factor. You cannot tell if every component of a couch configuration you want is in stock. You can't put the stock on hold. All you get is a red/yellow/green indicator of how much stock a store has. Since a couch has several modules and each module has a separate stock item for base, back cushion, and seat cushion upholstery, the odds of getting everything in one trip approaches zero.
I cannot think of anywhere else where a few tens of millions in tech development could more obviously build billions in enterprise value.
When another app is just a flick away, people will jump off much more quickly than with a book.
I know I will.
Today, every time I hear about Microsoft HoloLens I think about these IKEA workshops. The mission for Microsoft HoloLens and the IKEA catalogue is in total alignment. Everything Microsoft wants to do with their headset, IKEA wanted to do with the catalogue 20 years ago. I am confident that there is an Microsoft HoloLens/IKEA working group out there somewhere prototyping this exact thing. Microsoft HoloLens and IKEA catalogue is a very cool combination.
I've been trying to use the website because I miss going to ikea and let me tell you... it's bland like amazon.com but much less usable...
Yes, I also have childhood memories of reading through that thing, but these days if I want something from IKEA, their website is the first and only stop. Let's save these trees.
Now not needed.
It was something you could put down and pick up every once in a while, and have new decor ideas. It had a curated feel, which is another example of the human touch that will disappear with algorithm-generated "inspo" layouts on Pinterest, or affiliate link heavy blog posts from Apartment Therapy.
At least they plan on keeping an archive and having a compendium available for purchase. I hope that doesn't turn out to be vaporware.
* online store made browsing a lot harder * employees used the catalog constantly to look up requested items. * we would turn away several people a day who came in asking for catalog. * customers loved browsing the catalog * lots of older customers that weren’t ready to transition.
Part of it was that “kiosk” were crap.
So employees had a harder time looking items up.Another project involved some beverage being poured into a wine glass… it was actually constructed horizontally on a pane of transparent glass, with a half wine glass constructed over it. Truly amazing.
I kind of wonder if Ikea is going to survive covid. Their web page says everything I want is chronically out of stock. I don’t see why they can’t pivot to touchless pickup or delivery.
Instead, I’ve been buying furniture online from more than one of their competitors. The experience and quality control are worse than an in-store Ikea run, but the selection is better. It’s a step sideways, I suppose.
Back in the day, the Sears catalog was the behemoth for 3rd party merchant sales, backed by Sears. You could get vendor credit, fulfillment etc, all with sears. Virtually every service you get today with Amazon (FBA, ads), you could get with sears, on their catalog.
This is why the catalog was such a big deal.
It was the 20th century platform. And its dead now
I guess we'll see soon what it means to get rid of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOXQo7nURs0
They made it as a parody in the style of an iPhone reveal presentation from Steve Jobs.
If they shipped a paper catalogue and stuck to that model I can imagine people really taking to it.
Nowadays, there are Smartphone apps, membership programs, extremely specific targeting options with online ads etc, all of those methods are certainly a lot cheaper than printing an delivering a bulky catalog.
That is, if you do not care about the environmental aspects.
Convenience because I can stuff it in a bag or leave it on a coffee table, and not worry about its physical condition. Convenience also because I can flip to any page and start reading from there. On a tablet I'd need to use the horizontal scrollbar to fast forward through pages and it doesn't feel the same.
Reading a magazine on something that weighs over a pound is not comfortable. I never felt like I was kicking back and chilling with a magazine, just that I was holding a heavy, expensive piece of glass to read something I could have bought on the newsstand for 7 bucks.
Will we be able to browse the new catalogue without every scroll and click being tracked? For eternity?
Trees are renewable. Privacy? Much less so.
OWC/MacSales.com sends me one! I haven't bought any parts from them in years. At least the aftermarket car parts places stop sending you one after a few months of not buying anything.
Availability is a problem for Ikea currently - but at least they have a lot of volume and a really ruthlessly culled assortment. So usually they're a lot better than the competition. Almost everything is available for taking with you when you're at the store. I bet if you're doing design work for Ikea, it goes through a lot of checking before it will be produced.
Their personnel is absolutely great, I have really good experience of that.
(By the way, does the keyword "dang" actually do anything to help summon you?)
Someone commented below pandemic online shopping has crippled IKEA, but I hope they get things sorted and eventually figure out logistics of shipping items between region. Lot's of interesting accessories like Asian cleavers and and woks in Asia market. I know you can get those from any brand, but I like my 365+ collection. Also update some of the garbage planning tools, a few of them still use flash early this year.
This is the closest they come:
>Times change, however, and global companies hoping to stay relevant have little choice but to change with them. To that end, IKEA has announced that its catalog’s glorious run will come to an end, a decision the company arrived at within the past few months.
Archaic furniture catalog halts printing: "How sad! What a loss to our culture!"
Technology displaces millions of jobs, leaving real people destitute and without medical care: "That's just the free market, suck it up, rube!"