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Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#81

Post by tjoff »

fermienrico wrote: post #70
tjoff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that speaks more about the culture where you live rather than ikea? Your comment reads as if it was a new experience and that you've never tried ikea yourself.

No. Is it hard to see that IKEA furniture is not made to last? Doesn’t matter how many hands it changes - overall longevity is what determines its life.

Ikea design is generally excellent and the quality per dollar is in a league of its own.

That said, a $10 piece of furniture is not going to have $100 worth of materials... But ikea makes more expensive pieces as well.

I don't think I've thrown away anything from ikea because it was end of life. (Part from <$1 kitchen peripherals).

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#82

Post by zxcmx »

sitkack wrote: post #16
jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet that was the highest quality stuff Ikea ever produced. I was in a store for recycled stuff a week ago or so looking for a typewriter and some old comic books for my kids and it struck me that none of the furniture they was made by Ikea. That translates into there being a direct path to the landfill from Ikea.

Ikea has optimized the price and durability of an item to maximize utility for both the end user and the corp. People like getting new stuff for cheap and dont value resale or reuse. Ikea is an excellent machine for turning Borneo rain forest into landfill at the lowest price.

Oh man I love this line of argument but ikea is probably not the best place to deploy it.

The phrase "waste in transit" is so good. Once you have it, and viscerally understand the idea of things sitting on store shelves which you will briefly take into your house before their inevitable journey to landfill... yeah, you will never look at the world the same way.

But overall ikea are not the problem. They have corporate responsibility officers and like hippies who sold out and all kinds of things going on to ensure that the kind of social media disaster you discussed is supposed to never happen. Plus a lot of those people actually care.

Shoot back with interesting evidence of ikea corporate crimes if you have any though.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#83

Post by fermienrico »

tjoff wrote: post #81
fermienrico wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Is it hard to see that IKEA furniture is not made to last? Doesn’t matter how many hands it changes - overall longevity is what determines its life.

Ikea design is generally excellent and the quality per dollar is in a league of its own. That said, a $10 piece of furniture is not going to have $100 worth of materials... But ikea makes more expensive pieces as well. I don't think I've thrown away anything from ikea because it was end of life. (Part from <$1 kitchen peripherals).

The topic at hand is recyclability. You may have not throw things away but it is widely accepted and frankly utterly obvious - IKEA furniture has a short lifespan and it ends up being thrown away more according to the GP of this thread.

You’re circling around the argument.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#84

Post by bborud »

afriend4lyfe wrote: post #38

"In the later years of his life, Mr Kamprad had faced questions over his past links to the Nazis." It's crazy how he ran Ikea for over 70 years but a quarter of the article deals with his ties to Nazis. Granted, he admits it was the "greatest mistake" of his life, so I suppose the attention to it may not be unwarranted. But I think it would have been prudent to touch on what caused him to shift his perspective. "Yout…

When the war ended he was 19 years old. He was 17 when he was first labeled a "nazi" by the security services. 17 years old is pretty young.

At 17 I was, politically speaking, a dumbass. Like most children that age. Not that I even had any identifiable political view that was in any way expressed, but I didn't know shit about politics.

Today it is even worse since every kid is supposed to have opinions on everything, grows up having a semi-public persona while still being afflicted by the stupidity and naivety of a mind that has been barely usable for a handful of years.

I think "youthful stupidity" covers it plenty much.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#85

Post by tjoff »

fermienrico wrote: post #83
tjoff wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ikea design is generally excellent and the quality per dollar is in a league of its own. That said, a $10 piece of furniture is not going to have $100 worth of materials... But ikea makes more expensive pieces as well. I don't think I've thrown away anything from ikea because it was end of life. (Part from <$1 kitchen peripherals).

The topic at hand is recyclability. You may have not throw things away but it is widely accepted and frankly utterly obvious - IKEA furniture has a short lifespan and it ends up being thrown away more according to the GP of this thread. You’re circling around the argument.

Could not agree less. Not compared to the alternatives.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#86

Post by reimertz »

loceng wrote: post #73
reimertz wrote: post #32

I worked at Ikea for some time and it's quite amazing the possibilities you had as an employee pursuing a career within the company. Rather than them basing your performance on past studies and grades, you definitely had the possibility to pursue any role within the company as long as you had the "right" mentality and really wanted it. Just like any early-stage startup I've work with. I was a lazy university student…

Do you know of any good books that talk about the culture like this at Ikea? I'd love to read it.

Great question. I think their own documentation of it is spot on and gives a honest picture of their core values. You can read it for yourself here: http://ikea.in/culture-value

I guess it’s worth saying that I don’t work for Ikea anymore so my words are my own and not affiliated with Ikea in any way.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#87

Post by antirez »

WisNorCan wrote: post #68
antirez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less common to accumulate very big fortunes because in general there is much more redistribution of wealth and much higher taxes (so also as you accumulate you share a big amount with society). See for instance tipping in the US vs no tips but places paying a more fair amount of money to waiters in Europe. A different model.

The third richest man in the world, Armancio Ortega, is from Spain. The tenth richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault, is from France. Ingvar Kamprad was at one point the eighth. And there are many others. Lack of philanthropic giving in Europe is not due to a lack of wealth, but due to a desire for dynasty.

As I said as you accumulate wealth in Europe it's very likely that you gave a very large share of it back to the government just in the process of accumulating it. That is one thing but for sure there is also a matter of cultural POV because here is counter intuitive that is single persons that should try to fix things like poverty but more things like universal health care, decent schools for free and so forth.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#88

Post by 5_minutes »

bjourne wrote: post #77
5_minutes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectively, what IBM did, in helping the nazis, and was collaborating with them, for many years into the war - even when the US was getting involved —, was much worse then what this guy was doing. There’s also Porsche, Volkswagen (basically, Hitler’s own brand) and any other brands that were involved, and basically the catholic church was preaching in many EU countries for their sons to join the German army...

In which countries were the Catholic Church preaching that? All I've read claims the opposite, that the church was against Nazism: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206 http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/march-10th-2017/the-e... At the time the Catholic Church was the largest organization in the world, so some clergy is bound to have supported the Nazis, but the majority did not.

In Belgium it is widely known that families where promised more food stamps if they would sign up their sons. This was done by priests, at the local sunday church mass.

This is also one of the reasons there were so many 'collaborators' in belgium - a very Catholic country at the time - , while in fact the main goal was to get rid of the French dominance.

But if you're interested in the topic, Google what the Vatican did those days.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#89

Post by loceng »

reimertz wrote: post #86
loceng wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know of any good books that talk about the culture like this at Ikea? I'd love to read it.

Great question. I think their own documentation of it is spot on and gives a honest picture of their core values. You can read it for yourself here: http://ikea.in/culture-value I guess it’s worth saying that I don’t work for Ikea anymore so my words are my own and not affiliated with Ikea in any way.

Cool, thanks for the link.

Also, only someone with poor reading comprehension - whether through rushing or lack of focus - would have thought you still worked for Ikea, I appreciate you saying it for those people though. :)

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#90

Post by jchw »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
5_minutes wrote: post #3

Nice trivia: he actually started with delivering self-made furniture on his bike in his local town.

I'll bet that was the highest quality stuff Ikea ever produced. I was in a store for recycled stuff a week ago or so looking for a typewriter and some old comic books for my kids and it struck me that none of the furniture they was made by Ikea. That translates into there being a direct path to the landfill from Ikea.

Actually the real reason people throw it away is because it's inexpensive. Is it worth selling my $20 Ikea table? In the grand scheme, probably not. It's not worth as much because it's not as expensive to begin with. Some of it is certainly crap but a lot of the tables and shelves and whatnot are quite nice, but it doesn't mean you're going to get a lot of money for it second hand.
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