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Comment by hughprime | Hacker News Reader

IKEA has the added challenge of copycats. Brazen customers are known to come in with carpenters armed with measuring tapes to make replicas.

Wow. That's a great indication of how different the Chinese economic landscape is: it's cheaper to hire a carpenter to build you furniture than it is to buy it at Ikea.

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Maybe the solution is for IKEA China to become a cafeteria company. IKEA has to spend the R&D for developing furniture for their other markets anyway. So just ship the most radical and funky looking stuff to China (which would be mostly pointless to copy anyway) and set up a different lunch bar every 20m or so.

They could offer all the cuisines of northern Europe, seeing that the average Chinese person doesn't ever gets to travel and would've never gotten to taste any of it. As a kid I loved the swedish meatballs and german sausages the other kids brought at show and tell. My Asian parents just couldn't cook that stuff.

Expanding the cafeteria seems like a no-brainer. And if they can't do that, they should raise the prices. Any time you have more customers than you can handle, classical economics says to raise the price. Doesn't have to be by much. Has the side effect of (maybe) making the store less appealing to those who are least likely to buy the furniture.

Raising cafeteria prices too much would lead more people to bring in their own food. I see that happen at places like Starbucks, and even McDonald's as it is.

Obviously IKEA needs to open a factory there.

Because IKEA is a global brand, they need to maintain safety and pay standards that wouldn't scandalize their Western customers, which is why their Chinese factories can't produce for the same prices as local competitors.

Why couldn't China maintain a higher HR standard?

Obviously IKEA needs to charge an admission fee :)

When I first went to the IKEA Shanghai a few years ago, I was frustrated at how difficult it was to shop there. IKEA is setup to make you walk through the entire store. There is not shortcut to get to the checkout.

This problem becomes enormous when 90% of customers (lots; imagine christmas time mobs of people) are walking around as if they've just arrived at Disney World. Your trying to shop. They're casually strolling about getting in the way. Its a painful and slow shopping experience.

In IKEAs I have visited in Germany there are usually a few shortcuts. I wonder why there are no shortcuts in Shanghai.

I would assume they are making more than one copy.

I don't know about carpenter rates, but it's cheaper to get a custom-tailored suit than to buy a factory-made name brand.

"it's cheaper to hire a carpenter to build you furniture than it is to buy it at Ikea."

I don't think so. They rather take the design and produce and resell their own version.

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