Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 189 posts

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#151

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

alkonaut wrote: post #94
jacquesm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is a good point. It’s the opposite of charging a higher price to signal that your product is premium.

They keep lowering prices and people think their products are cheap and poorly made.

In reality the quality is comparable to furniture 2-3 times the price.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#152

Post by fermienrico »

carussell wrote: post #109
fermienrico wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The original anecdote is that there were very few IKEA items in a store for recycled goods. The point you seem to be ignoring is tjoff's comment that IKEA products are so good that you can resell them and don't have to resort to donating them. Here's my anecdata: My desk is made by IKEA. It's sitting in front of me right now, having been disassembled, moved, and reassembled 5 times. I had an IKEA bed that I got rid o…

>> The original anecdote is that there were very few IKEA items in a store for recycled goods. The point you seem to be ignoring is tjoff's comment that IKEA products are so good that you can resell them and don't have to resort to donating them.

That doesn't make any sense to me. Overall lifespan of the product is short - doesn't matter how many hands it changes! Eventually more IKEA products end up in the landfill. Think about it from a macro perspective.

Let's take an exemple:

- A coffee table that lasts 3 years from Ikea that has had 10 owners

- A coffee table that lasts 20 years from Room & Board that also has had 10 owners

Which one do you think is going to end up in the landfill faster? Doesn't matter if its resellability is high? At some point, it will fail and end up in the landfill.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#153

Post by Scoundreller »

geezerjay wrote: post #92
jchw wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like the problem is the difficulty of posting on Craigslist and dealing with buyers, and not the item itself.

It's an improvement though, when the threshold was putting a post in the newspaper, you probably wouldn't deal with it unless it was a 100 EUR return.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#154

Post by robert_foss »

zkomp wrote: post #140
slac wrote: post #132

Mixed feelings here. Incredible entrepreneur that built an empire on solid product values. Masterfully executed through laser focus on logistics. Brought design and furniture to the masses. Shadowed by his Nazi roots which I never felt he apologized forcefully enough... And the fact the incredibly shadowy ikea tax structure makes it hard for anyone to compete against. Profiles itself as a Swedish company and uses the…

Tax evasion... did that not happen only after the swedish arrogant Socialists wanted to impose one extra tax that would only hit IKEA? I really think my country has been crazy a long time with the highest taxation in the world... Honestly, we need more companies leaving...

Sorry, which tax was proposed that specifically targetted only IKEA?

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#155

Post by unicornporn »

Ingvar was a fascist sympathizer with corporatist ideas. He stayed true to his nazi sympathies long after the atrocities of Nazi Germany became known to the world. He was once a very active member of Svensk Socialistisk Samling[1][3].

As late as 2010 he hailed the Swedish fascist leader Per Engdahl[1][2].

He may have been an excellent business man (and tax evader), but please remembers these facts too.

[1] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nya-avslojanden-om-kampra...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_Engdahl

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Workers%27_...

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#156

Post by jacquesm »

adrianN wrote: post #34
jacquesm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've disassembled and moved Ikea furniture multiple times. You have to be a bit careful, but it's certainly not impossible.

Well, lucky you. I've had those 'cam lock nuts' break loose on first assembly (so not even when disassembling to move them), and I'm plenty careful and have lots of experience when it comes to mechanics. The basic problem is this: You are supposed to put a very short screw into a bunch of glued together particle board fibers at a ninety degree angle, and then the cam lock will pull on that link to create the desired connection. So you're pulling with considerable force on a 5 mm screw thread into particle board. That's entirely the wrong way to connect particle board, it is borderline strong enough for that first assembly but if you ever take that piece of furniture apart the fibers will be pretty much destroyed the second time you drive the screw in, and anybody who has tried to move the pieces with those screws sticking out more than likely ended up repairing things in creative ways because they will break off when you look at them cross eyed so forget about moving them around.

Altogether this is one of the worst things about Ikea furniture, that and the over reliance on honeycomb cardboard filled surfaces making solid looking sidewalls anything but.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#157

Post by jacquesm »

philjohn wrote: post #102
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.

You say that, but in two previous homes I've purchased, assembled and fitted IKEA kitchens - they were far better quality than other options in the same price range, and even held a candle to ones costing 2x as much. Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts, good quality hinges and handles - the cabinets themselves were just laminated chipboard, but unless you're spending £££ that's the same for most kitchen supplie…

> Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts

Easily fooled? No way that is solid oak. And for once that's a good thing, solid oak would warp, so you'd have to cross laminate it to counteract this. It's about 95% MDF with some veneer to make it look like wood. Yes it's heavy, but MDF is about as heavy as solid wood would be. The only way to get the kind of fit that makes it possible to assemble an IKEA product is to use what is called 'engineered' materials, a completely natural product would not work at that scale, there is just way too much variance. So even when IKEA does sell stuff that is made of wood throughout it will still be an engineered product. But the doors and drawer fronts of kitchen cabinets are not going to be cost effective that way so instead you get this MDF+surface coating solution, which for that application is ok.

The easiest place to verify this is where the hinges embed in the doors and the boreholes for the drawer to frame connection, there you can easily see that it is not solid wood.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#158

Post by acdha »

woolvalley wrote: post #149
philjohn wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but in two previous homes I've purchased, assembled and fitted IKEA kitchens - they were far better quality than other options in the same price range, and even held a candle to ones costing 2x as much. Solid oak for the doors and drawer fronts, good quality hinges and handles - the cabinets themselves were just laminated chipboard, but unless you're spending £££ that's the same for most kitchen supplie…

A good chunk of that wooden kitchen stuff that ikea sells is actually a thin layer of wood with an MDF core inside. For example: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/70335212/

They sell both but are good about clearly labeling things so you can know what you’re buying. This contrasts with some other manufacturers who bury it more.

Re: Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died

#160

Post by jakecopp »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #31

Moving from a country with no Ikea to a country with Ikea has been a paradigm shift for me, and I'm not sure it's entirely a good one. It used to be that if I wanted furniture, I'd go to the second hand store, and look for some used furniture that fitted my purpose. If I couldn't find something that worked, then I'd look online, and then failing that, I'd buy it new. I found some real gems at the second hand store. A…

Or in my case, I had the luck of finding the IKEA desk I was looking for - three blocks away from me, second hand, already assembled, on Gumtree. This is why I love cities. (Sydney isn't even that dense)
Post reply on HN