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Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#91

Post by drawkbox »

What a great entrepreneur and product guy.

Kamprad should be very proud of what he built.

Not many business owners today start from the aspect of frugality like he did. IKEA is a place that targets everyone but is priced at middle class or lower levels unlike most products today. That goes back to his roots.

Mr Kamprad was renowned for his devotion to frugality, reportedly driving an old Volvo and travelling by economy class.

In a 2016 interview with Swedish television channel TV4, Mr Kamprad said that it was "in the nature of Småland to be thrifty".

"If you look at me now, I don't think I'm wearing anything that wasn't bought at a flea market," he said.

Far away from Sweden, on a Saturday night me and my wife were in line buying some sheets at IKEA for beds we just setup from IKEA, and it was bustling with massive lines. His products have massive reach.

IKEA is quite good at everything they do and are extremely efficient, except checkout on a Saturday but we grabbed some meatballs while waiting in line.

Fun fact: IKEA stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd which is derived from founder's initials and hometown. [1]

The driving idea behind IKEA was, and is, that anyone should be able to afford stylish, modernist furniture. Kamprad felt he was not just cutting costs and making money, but serving the people as well. [1]

[1] https://sweden.se/business/ingvar-kamprad-founder-of-ikea/

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#92

Post by geezerjay »

jchw wrote: post #90
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.

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.

I agree. Ikea furniture is so cheap and readily available that reusing it after a renovation isn't exactly worth the trouble. I have an ikea table that is as new but I'm planning to either give it away or throw it in the trash because it's taking up space and cost abour 30€. Am I going to bother putting it on craigslist to recover 10 or 20€? It's not worth it.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#93

Post by geezerjay »

5_minutes wrote: post #30
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.

My take on this is that they make some real crappy stuff, like in: if you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away. And then they also have some decent, quality stuff, like some of their couches. The problem is that as a consumer, it’s sometimes a bit unclear which category you’re buying into. Price is not a good indicator when it comes to ikea stuff: they have cheap stuff that’s great and expensive stuff…

> you ever take it apart, you might as well throw it away.

I'm sure virtually no other piece of hone furniture was ever designed to be taken apart. Iikea's stuff is designed to be easily shipped and put together by unskilled people, but not to be taken apart. I'm sure that you won't rate your cellphone or laptop by how well it handles being disassembled.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#94

Post by alkonaut »

jacquesm wrote: post #29
tjoff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have never bought anything second hand. Ikea items are extremely popular and easy to sell used.

I visit the local garbage drop off a couple of times per year and the amount of Ikea stuff that gets dumped there is depressing. If you actually read the comment above you'd see that I do buy stuff second hand.

The fraction of IKEA furniture thrown away would be likely to match the fraction being IKEA in homes. That is, significant.

A problem with the IKEA stuff is that it’s a) cheap, so little monetary value in that old table you don’t need any more - even if it’s still in perfect condition and b) A prospective buyer can buy a new one (still cheap) and the new one is trivial to transport home compared to the used one that needs some disassembly.

So being cheap obviously makes it thrown away a lot - regardless of quality. You don’t hesitate to throw out something that wasn’t expensive, and prospective buyers always have the option of buying new.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#95

Post by alkonaut »

drawkbox wrote: post #91

What a great entrepreneur and product guy. Kamprad should be very proud of what he built. Not many business owners today start from the aspect of frugality like he did. IKEA is a place that targets everyone but is priced at middle class or lower levels unlike most products today. That goes back to his roots. Mr Kamprad was renowned for his devotion to frugality, reportedly driving an old Volvo and travelling by econo…

I believe that (name+place) was effectively the address of the business at the time it started.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#97

Post by bdcravens »

jacquesm wrote: post #22
varjag wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point out specifically where they are cutting corners? Their materials are cheap, but not particularly short-lived. The woodwork quality is second to none: never experienced jams, excess play or position mismatches on IKEA pieces.

The edge connectors are particularly troublesome and those are present in almost all their furniture making it next to impossible to disassemble a piece of furniture to move it to a new house. They are designed to be single use.

> next to impossible to disassemble a piece of furniture to move it to a new house. They are designed to be single use.

As is most furniture?

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#98

Post by yourapostasy »

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.

How much a civilization throws away and what it throws away is a very rough gauge of its technological and scientific level. At the far-future side of the spectrum, you only detect very low levels of heat energy close to zero Kelvin, and some similarly low leakage of EM. They’ve mastered nanotechnology say, and what we throw out today is high-energy, rich feedstocks to them.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#99

Post by matt4077 »

Retric wrote: post #52
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…

I think it's important to realize mistakes 10+ million people make are far from character defining. All governments do good and bad things and it's important to judge them in that context. What separated the Italian fascists from the German fascists was not necessarily obvious at the time. Further, while history reasonably judges German connections harsher, that's filtered through both bias and information people sim…

No. I’m sorry, but the Nazis were, objectively, „the baddies“ in every moral system but their own. And Germans of the time knew enough to come to that conclusions.

It’s possibly right that there is not much use in blaming the opportunists of the time, mostly because there were to many to punish them all. But there also were a significant number who risked or lost their lives in opposition, and this “history is written by the winners” cynicism does more to besmirch the latter, than it absolves the former.

(Am german, have asked grandparents the tough questions)

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#100

Post by kalleboo »

drawkbox wrote: post #91

What a great entrepreneur and product guy. Kamprad should be very proud of what he built. Not many business owners today start from the aspect of frugality like he did. IKEA is a place that targets everyone but is priced at middle class or lower levels unlike most products today. That goes back to his roots. Mr Kamprad was renowned for his devotion to frugality, reportedly driving an old Volvo and travelling by econo…

Some of the "frugality" stuff is just image - he also had a Porsche, lived in a very nice property in Switzerland for 40 years, and also owned a French vineyard (although he forced IKEA to sell the wine from the latter so he may have actually made money off of that one...)
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