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The Final Frontier of Furniture?

By Sarah Stodola

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There's common ground these days for young New Yorkers. Professionals, students, bankers, artists, Brookynites and Manhattanites. It's modern, efficient, and user-friendly. It's a phenomenon, really. It's a sign of the future, perhaps. It exists in all of our homes, for sure. And there's a word for it.

IKEA.

Okay, it's an acronym. But this only adds to the sense of contemporary efficiency.

For those still browsing at Pottery Barn and Jennifer Convertibles, IKEA is a chain of Swedish furniture stores that has all but cornered the budget furniture market, especially in and around America's (and other countries') large cities. And I, for one, have yet to enter the apartment of an under-thirty New Yorker and not spot an item from the place.

It's daunting to enter an IKEA store - frightening in a futuristic, people-have-lost-control-of-reality sort of way. Every IKEA store I've seen is housed in a gargantuan blue and yellow building, which one enters through correspondingly gargantuan revolving doors. As you enter, you pick up a paper and pencil with which to keep track of the items you like. Once inside, you inevitably give yourself over to the pull of the place. The arrows on the floor tell you where to walk, and you willingly - enthusiastically - follow directions.

The first phase of the IKEA shopping experience takes you through the showrooms. Superficially, these aren't so different from other furniture showrooms. Sure, there's a warehouse feel to it, but anyone who’s been to New York lately knows that warehouses are "in" these days (except they're called lofts). Unless you get close enough to read the price tags, you could be in any furniture store. It's the realization that you can actually afford this stuff that sweeps you away. And unlike most inexpensive furniture, you actually want to see some of these items in your apartment. The furniture has a modern, trendy look - styles normally found only in the uninviting Soho stores suddenly become attainable.

After the showrooms, you enter the accessory section (assuming you bypass the café). This is where you can buy smaller accessories for a house or apartment; glassware, dinnerware, lampshades, etc. You still follow the arrows on the floor. If you don't, you might miss something important, and without anyone telling you, you know this would be a mistake. Finally, you enter the warehouse. You find the packages containing the items from the showroom you want. Then you check out. When you get home, more often than not you assemble the furniture yourself.

This last step is a crucial component of the IKEA phenomenon. You, the customer, have become a worker in the production line. The IKEA website acknowledges this as a part of its vision, stating that "you do your part…Because most items are packed flat, you can get them home easily, and assemble them yourself. This means we don't charge you for things you can easily do on your own. So together we save money." It's ingenious. It keeps prices low and quality high. It takes what was once a revolution in manufacturing and places a contemporary twist on it.

In all of its forward thinking efficiency, the IKEA store feels like part of the Matrix. Its efficiency and user-friendliness strike one as computer-generated. It's easy to imagine the IKEA store as a video game. The revolving doors, the arrows keeping customers in line, the Fordist check-out lines. The place, as a whole, is as calculated as a computer program. Every step could be the result of a click of the mouse button. At the beginning of this game, you'd choose a floor plan from the seven or eight that had been preprogrammed - studio, railroad, basic one-bedroom, etc. If you wanted, you could even add temporary walls for extra roommates. From there, the object would be to furnish the hypothetical apartment at the lowest price. Record-holders might have a score of two or three thousand bucks.

As a person who usually scorns large-scale corporate capitalism (and who doesn't understand computer programs), I find in myself a strange lack of contempt for IKEA. I'm a person who goes to Barnes and Noble to browse the bookshelves, then heads to the local bookstore to make my purchase. I avoid Starbucks as if caffeine were lethal - no small feat in New York City. And the rare trip to Walmart makes me physically uncomfortable. But I look forward to my occasional outings to IKEA. I plan them far ahead of time. I make lists of what I want to look for while I'm there. I peruse the catalog more than once when it arrives in the mail.

There is something about IKEA that makes it more likeable than other chains. Perhaps it's nothing more than the nostalgia factor. Barnes and Noble, Starbucks, and Walmart have all run local businesses into the ground. It's becoming more and more of a rarity to be able to spend an afternoon browsing in the locally-owned bookstore, then heading to the local café to take a look at the book you bought, then stopping by the neighborhood market on the way home. These places were all different from the next shop, they all had character. And when they were replaced by impersonal chains, people felt that the chains had taken something they cared about away from them. There are 97 Starbucks locations listed in the Manhattan Yellow Pages. What once existed in those 97 storefronts? I'll take my chances and say it probably wasn't a slew of Seattle's Best Coffee Shops.

Starbucks has undoubtedly changed the look of Manhattan, and most would agree that it hasn't been for the best. And although it's true the chains wouldn't be there if people did not frequent them, it still seems that most people would, for the most part, be happier if the chains abandoned their city. I would venture to say, in fact, that if it weren't for tourists (and commuters), Starbucks would not be quite so ubiquitous in Manhattan. Just look at Brooklyn - only two Starbucks listed there.

In the case of IKEA, though, nothing has been driven out of town. There was no such thing as a discount furniture store - that sold furniture you would actually want in your house - until IKEA came along. It hasn't planted itself in city centers, driving out the local merchants. Instead, it sticks to the suburbs, where people who don't care about character won't mind its presence, and people who do can make the trip out from the nearby city every so often. In large part, IKEA actually caters to city dwellers. In New York, IKEA goes so far as to offer customers a free ride from Penn station to the New Jersey store and back. The design of the furniture often complements a cramped city apartment more than a sprawling suburban home. Many of us remember the brilliant billboard appearing on Lafayette Street a year or so ago - a studio apartment shaped like a bottle, filled with IKEA furniture, bearing the slogan, "Absolut New York." New Yorkers live in small spaces, and IKEA understands that (New Yorkers also enjoy their drinks, and Absolut Vodka understands that).

In short, I have yet to find something not to like about IKEA. It seems to be corporate in all the right ways (I'll concede, though, that I have not researched the company's practices regarding wages paid in other countries, child labor, etc. - for all I know IKEA is just as corrupt as the worst companies out there in these respects).

Interestingly, it isn't an American company. IKEA hails from Sweden, a country known for giving a socialist bent to capitalism (or a capitalist bent to socialism). Sweden's capitalism is a kinder capitalism than America's. And where American companies are known for squeezing every penny out of their customers, this Swedish company seems to do just the opposite. Shopping at IKEA is a revelation of sorts; it's clean, organized, immense, useful, affordable, and corporate. So far, American customers seem to appreciate this approach. It represents a type of capitalism that doesn't screw anyone over.

And perhaps, futuristic shopping experience included, that is the most promising feature IKEA has to offer.

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Sarah Stodola is the Managing Editor of Me Three.  She can be contacted at sstodola@methree.net.

© 2003 Me Three