Monday 23 July 2012

Retail Ikea

I've just been to Ikea. It's OK it wasn't for me; Elder Boy is setting up home and Ikea is the store that has the most, apparently. I don't deny it has an attractive range of goods and offers attractive prices, but it is years since I had last entered a store. Saturday was the day. Oh my God.

The place is vast, which shouldn't be a concern, it is their choice and right to decide on the size of their store. But we wanted one thing, a TV stand (OK we got a clock too) and Ikea have ideas about the way you should live your life that go beyond being slavishly tied to their brand.

We took a flatbed trolley in, fought up the one-floor-at-a-time lifts and 'progressed'. At the display of the item required we couldn't find where it was in the self-service warehouse.This is another intimidating aspect of Ikea; you have to find out how the store works, how to buy things in there.

And that a wardrobe is not a wardrobe in their eyes. It is a cupboard that can be a wardrobe if you buy the appropriate fittings, which are sold separately. Maybe they should teach 'Ikea' in schools. Heck, maybe they do. A member of staff told us the warehouse location and off we went. Wheeling our trolley around corner after corner of endless displays. All stuff we had no interest in.

Then found that you cannot take a trolley such as ours down on the sloping moving floor (do they have a name?) and as the lift was out of action, abandoned the trolley and made our way down. Now to find a trolley and get the box, remembering to place it with the label showing, for the ease of the staff at the till. You rapidly come to understand on entering a store, everything is about Ikea, not you.

At the checkout the lad happily used his scanner on a wire to scan the heavy box on the trolley, but we had to put the clock on the conveyor belt to be scanned. Stupid. But we were away.

Let's be clear what is wrong with Ikea; it is a deliberate pain in the backside. No matter what you want you have to walk through the whole store, which is irritating to the nth degree and made worse by their arrows ordering your direction of travel. These don't have any impact on the morons (who it has to be said on my visit, exclusively didn't speak English) who were wandering aimlessly about, in any direction when they weren't blocking the isles with their trolleys and kids in buggies.

You actually had to make yourself known before they felt any obligation to, reluctantly it seemed, move out of the way. Ikea are responsible for this because of the store layout, forcing people to traverse the entire place and for marketing to morons.

Harsh? Maybe not. In days we no longer have, when thinking for yourself was a common activity, any store that tried to do what Ikea do would have been empty. No matter how tempting their wares, no-one would have been seen dead in a shop with such an arrogant attitude.

And that is the crux of it; people don't think for themselves these days and are happy to walk round like zombies, doing exactly what they are told, buying because it's Ikea and so must be stylish. I don't know who are the more moronic, Ikea Executives for their selfish, high-handed, rude stores, or the people who flock there and endure its insults as if they were blessings.

Don't get me wrong. A lot of what they do is fine. I have yet to find a better, cheap bookcase than Ikea's Billy. It is fit for purpose in a way even much more expensive ones aren't. But much of the 'chipboard' from which Ikea flat pack furniture is constructed is of very poor quality and the finish is sometimes barely acceptable.

If you want something you feel Ikea may be able to supply, go online and order it for home delivery. Don't ever even consider going to a store. I for one hate them and hate is a strong word.

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