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Comment by xattt | Hacker News Reader

E.g. the race to the bottom of the Billy bookcase. In the last 5 years, IKEA has started using plastic fasteners to secure the backing.

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Those plastic clips work better than the traditional backing nails they used to use. Those nails couldn't hold back shit in the presses wood they used.

I have to agree, I just bought these and was at first skeptical, but they seem like a much better engineered solution. The two-part clip expands in the hole, greatly increasing friction to keep it in vs a static (and smooth!) nail, and their heads are also bigger than those little tacks reducing chances of the hole in the backboard failing.

Ah ah I have several white "Billy", the oldest dating back to the late 80s. The shelves are painted solid wood planks. The latest one has shelves made of beehive cardboard.

I break this promise from time to time, but every time I buy an IKEA product lately, I vow never to do it again.

Ikea has products at just about every price category. The cheap stuff is cheap, the more expensive stuff is nicer. There's something for everyone.

IKEA has some of the best quality cheap furniture. To get something noticeably better you need to spend at least 2x for any given item; 3-5x is common for not at all fancy stuff.

It’s true, but they used to have some of the best quality cheap-mid priced furniture.

They changed their target market segment to lean into the “discards their furniture in less than 5 years” ICP, and they also heavily optimized for shipping (eg their bottom-end Kallax is now actually made of corrugated cardboard instead of plyboard, strength-to-weight is amazing, but still less durable).

So both are true, that they still represent “good value” in a dollar-per-value sense, but also lowered their absolute quality. (This is the exact point OP is making.)

I’m glad IKEA exists but it really only serves very specific use cases these days. They are great for the moves apartments every 12 months crowd and the needs a piece for the spare bedroom that will rarely get used crowd. They are also great for young kids furniture that will get trashed no matter what quality you buy.

I appreciate it for what it is but consumers really need to understand what they are buying.

OP is flat out wrong. Some SKUs got value engineered to be less durable over time to keep up with inflation (or material costs, i.e. solid wood is just more expensive now), i.e. expedite->kallax, billy. But new SKU enabled by new tech/manufacturing processes like their power coated steel / stamped metal pieces are absurd dollar per quality relative to engineered or even solid wood. Of course it's not to everyone's taste, but fundamental reality if ones taste is solid wood, that material is no longer abundant/cheap/affordable, like how we use to feed lobsters to prisoners. A $90 heavy duty BROR shelf is ~$30 IN 1990 DOLLARS, about a cost of a Billy back then, except it's larger and much stronger.

BILLY quietly slid from mid-tier to cheap tier in order to keep the nostalgic momentum. The twist is that there are certain products that people use as benchmarks of quality (like Arizona iced tea).

If the tier changes without some sort of inflection, you perceive it as degradation of quality.

> benchmarks of quality (like Arizona iced tea)

Not a good example. Arizona tea is held in high esteem only because it never went up in price. The beverage itself has always been of a clearly dubious quality.

I guess I meant to say a benchmark of “constants”. A change in quality of product (even from meh to more meh) suggests something’s amiss.

Do you have suggestions on where to buy high quality furniture? My local furniture stores seems to sell 20% better pieces at 100% more cost.

Some of my non-IKEA furniture were just really lucky finds. I was looking for bookcases at a time when there was no nearby IKEA, and they did not deliver.

I ended up going to a local store, finding an unfinished bookshelf that was able to paint to my liking. It was absolutely a BIFL find. Another I bought at a close-out sale.

There is no one suggestion, but rather piece things together. This was about a decade and a half ago, and it seems that everyone is hustling so good deals are hard to find.

I don't. My house is 95% IKEA. (I'm in the 'kids will destroy everything, so it doesn't make sense to pay extra' customer cohort.)

The buy for life alternative is only ever an option if you are a home owner. I would not want to move with the massive furniture of my parents.

Interesting. I rarely have problems with IKEA products, but I had quite many problems with bespoke wooden pieces of furniture.

I find it depends on what you buy... my couch and table are fine, my bed wobbles and squeaks a fair bit... /shrug

> my bed wobbles and squeaks a fair bit...

Well, that isn’t necessarily a bad sign I guess.

I’ve found many beds ship with the minimum viable hardware to hold them together. You might see if you can find better screws/bolts/etc and replace the cheap ones that come with your frame.

Another semi-permanent option is to run lines of wood glue before connecting pieces together.

Well, you are right, my only IKEA bed was bad and I spent over USD 1500 (in CZK) for a solid hand made bed, which will likely outlast me.

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