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Comment by amemisoglu | Hacker News Reader

From "quality" perspective, don't imitiate Ikea :)

This is silly.

I love Ikea stuff.

I bought an Ikea kitchen, nobody else will give you a 15 year warranty. I have read stories of kitchens being completely replaced because Ikea no longer made a certain design.

If the cheaper furniture lasts me 10 years, I will most likely be ready to replace it anyway, as my taste changes.

I guess if you are going for a certain historic style and plan on keeping it that way forever then obviously solid wood is a superior choice.

> This is silly

It is on point, in my experience. We've bought various pieces of IKEA furniture over the last 15 years, and the stuff they're building in the last couple years is atrocious. And it's not even that cheap. I'm done buying their furniture, I can get cheap crap from China with similar tolerances for less money.

I get where you are coming from, but why not? What IKEA produces for the price is seriously impressive. Also why would you need particle board or MDF when filling furniture with cardboard is way cheaper and mostly fits the bill.

However, I think that we as software developers are more like hand crafted furniture makers. And that there is WYSIWYG (like Squarespace) for the masses. And IMHO there is nothing wrong with that.

I would argue the LACK table is the textbook definition of a good MVP. Minimal, light, affordable, functional. Granted, I remember when it was $7.99, but the point stands.

And you can make a LackRack from it [1].

1. https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

Tbf there’s two different levels of IKEA. There’s the flimsy, throwaway stuff (good for what it is) and then there’s a higher quality level. The higher quality items come at a price that is commensurate with their quality level but definitely jarring compared to the pricing of other IKEA items.

Is there a list of which items are in which tiers?

Hm, couldn’t find a list as such but this list of most expensive ikea goods has some good examples: https://blog.cheapism.com/ikeas-most-expensive-products/amp/

I can also vouch for the quality of their Sonos speaker and stainless steel bar cart: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/kungsfors-kitchen-cart-stainles...

Why not? The quality is good enough that millions of people around the world are using it in their house right now, profitably for Ikea. I'd say that's a very good definition of quality to imitated.

Exactly. I wouldn't dance on most of it but it serves its purpose quite adequately. I find that IKEA has consistently good quality. Very little of there stuff is great quality, but almost nothing is of a low quality. It is all adequate at a very reasonable price.

I agree that if you are expecting top quality you will be disappointed. But for the price it is hard to find much of better quality. Especially not so consistently.

> I wouldn't dance on most of it

Which reminds me - and it's not IKEA-specific: I wonder how many people got severely injured or lost their lives due to a desk or wardrobe collapsing under them when they stood on it, unaware that these days, desks and other waist-level flat furniture often aren't designed to hold the weight of an adult human? When I grew up, standing on furniture was a normal thing - these days, I'm very careful about even leaning on it.

Many pieces include an anchor bracket because kids go squish

The furniture I climbed on in the 1980s, which was probably circa 1960-80, was stout and never budged when I and friends/cousins jumped on it.

Agreed. Their stuff used to be alright -- cheap materials, but good precision. You don't buy it to last decades, and that's okay because it's inexpensive. But lately it's really gone to hell. Same cheap materials, but the precision of manufacturing is gone. We've been disappointed in the stuff we've purchased in the last year or so, and we've been happy IKEA customers for 15 years. Not any more.

Compared to what? I'm not going to Roche Bobois for a whole house full of furniture. Ikea is vastly better than the typical big discount furniture store.

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