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IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

ikeamuseum.com

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Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#71

Post by zeroq »

galfarragem wrote: post #28

I'd happily pay for the traditional physical IKEA yearly catalog. I suspect that if they sold it in-store for a few euros (€2?) just to cover printing costs, many people would buy it. It's more than a product list, it’s a cultural artifact, offering a window into the aesthetics, values, and lifestyle of its time. I still keep their old catalogs, and I’m not alone.

Fun fact - Getty Images used to send physical albums of their stock photo collections.

It was some 25 years ago, I was doing freelance for an ad agency, and while visiting the office and waiting for my appointment to finalize some paperwork I was browsing through these. When my guy finally showed up to pick me up he asked if I liked them and said - you can get these for free, just write them. So I did and they mailed me 10kg worth of albums. Just like that.

Just a cool memory from the past. Back then internet wasn't that rich, mobile phones were novelty, and when you visited a musuem or gallery and liked you bought a massive album to hold on to your memories.

These days, when visiting such places (think sistine chapel) I don't even bother to do pictures at all. If I want to recall something I can find endless stream of top quality pictures made by professionals with equipment worth as much as my car and in clinical settings, with no crowds and perfect lighting.

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#72

Post by showcaseearth »

torben-friis wrote: post #58
112233 wrote: post #55

A bit OT, but why is ikea internet store (any country) designed to be so unusable? Lists of available components hidden in pdfs tucked in obscure menu, no way to find compatible components, search flooded with tens of thousands of "combinations" — I mean, they obviously know what they are doing. What is the goal of making it such way?

This is completely anectodal, but I have a friend who works there and he talks about a very change-averse culture. He has to sit through talks about how Ikea is a bussiness that already works very well and the most important thing is to avoid any changes that have even a 0.001% chance of making it not work. Many relatively trivial deployments have to be approved by a lengthy international bureaucracy, with a focus on…

Yep, this is it. I've heard similar.

I worked for a few years at a 100+ year old privately owned (same family) B2B supplier with insane profits. Website was outdated but highly practical, sales/CRM (if you can call it that) systems were mostly command line and hadn't changed fundamentally since the 1980s. These systems worked, and any proposal to change anything took months of meetings and debates and review of every cost/benefit possible. Proving that a change directly translated to a clear revenue metric was nearly impossible– for at least this niche, would more modern sales software actually translate to more orders? (answer: not really, a question reanalyzed every few years in depth). Would a nicer website get more conversions? (also no, something A/B tested to death every few years). Changing the position of one product grouping by a few pixels might be a 6 month job, lol.

By contrast, their fulfillment center was cutting edge, highly automated, and relatively experimental– if it improved the speed and cut costs, they jumped right on. These are much easier to measure as profitable.

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#73

Post by Gravityloss »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #35
criddell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would be hard for them to make at a reasonable price today and they wouldn't sell in big numbers at a higher price. Adam Savage recently posted a video about his favorite IKEA cabinet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLAAxxjM_7U The drawers have box joints which is something I can't imagine IKEA of today doing. It's on page 311 of their 1997 catalog FYI.

Good housekeeping wrote as recently as 2023 that ikea kitchen cabinets used dovetail joinery.[1] But this runs counter to my and everyone I know's experience. Not sure how/why they could write that. [1] https://www.aol.com/best-kitchen-cabinet-brands-according-19...

Every single Ikea kitchen furniture unit I've worked with has been flat pack, made of chipboard and assembled with these bolts that attach to a sort of a worm screw (edit: cam dowel lock nut), and some dowels, maybe a few screws. Not a single sheet of real wood or plywood, no dovetail or finger joints.

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#74

Post by CGMthrowaway »

Gravityloss wrote: post #73
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good housekeeping wrote as recently as 2023 that ikea kitchen cabinets used dovetail joinery.[1] But this runs counter to my and everyone I know's experience. Not sure how/why they could write that. [1] https://www.aol.com/best-kitchen-cabinet-brands-according-19...

Every single Ikea kitchen furniture unit I've worked with has been flat pack, made of chipboard and assembled with these bolts that attach to a sort of a worm screw (edit: cam dowel lock nut), and some dowels, maybe a few screws. Not a single sheet of real wood or plywood, no dovetail or finger joints.

Yes the cams is how ikea put drawers together in just about everything. Its a pretty cool and good solution. It's just not a box joint

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#76

Post by superice »

makeitdouble wrote: post #65
Reason077 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA likes to find ways to get you into their physical stores because they know you’re going to end up buying more than just the items you came for. So they have a website that sort of teases you, but isn’t actually good enough to replace the physical stores. You’ll start on the website, but get frustrated with it and eventually just drive over to IKEA to find the items you want. And you’ll also come home with some c…

Also to note, shipping prices are egregious compared to the product prices. In most cases shipping a single product will cost 2 or 3 times more than the product price. They made efforts during COVID so they're obviously aware of the issue, and I'm sure they al see it as lost opportunity, but probably still don't want to eat the cost or go full Amazon and have their own centers. TBH as a customer I'm fine with keeping…

Shipping has always been a strong point for Ikea. Just look at how efficient most of their stuff is packaged, usually into very neat rectangular packages. They can fit a ton of stuff into a small volume, which improves shipping cost a lot. Last mile will always be relatively expensive, but shipping a truck load or a 40ft shipping container is relatively cheap. In the end it all comes down to cost per unit of volume, compared to the raw product cost per volume. A dense product will not nearly be affected by high shipping prices as much, and due to Ikea being insanely good at packaging, I expect they are outcompeting the rest of the market at this game by a decent margin.

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#77

Post by pkaye »

rixrax wrote: post #16

This is awesome! I wish Omega, Zenith, Seiko and other watch manufacturers would do the same and publish their historic catalogs online! And auto manufacturers, and really everyone who is in the kind of business where catalogs like this exists.

I came upon the Harrods 1912 catalog. Its interesting browse the catalog for what was available back then.

https://archive.org/details/harrods-for-everything-images/mo...

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#78

Post by zeroq »

degrews wrote: post #56
freddie_mercury wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And behind the scenes, work on the next catalogue had already begun – a process lasting several months and involving planning, construction of interiors, photography and filming, all led by catalogue manager Mia Olsson Tunér. It is naive to assume printing costs are the only costs involved. I feel comfortable assuming IKEA had a better understanding of the economic fundamentals of the catalogue than HN commenters.

No one is assuming printing costs are the only costs to produce the catalogue. The point of pricing the catalogue at printing costs is to cover the marginal cost of offering the catalogue for sale. The fixed costs of producing the calendar are incurred either way.

Same way as IKEA restaurants were serving decent quality food for dimes.

It was business decision. People were thinking - we have a day off, we could go there and there, do some shopping, and then we go there for food, or we could go to the IKEA and eat there.

If you're "slave to the IKEA" and want to cherish your free day with consumerism, it was a no brainer if you wanted to shop on a budget and eat for free.

Unforntuantely, catalogues are gone and so are days of cheap food in IKEA.

Re: IKEA Catalogs 1951-2021

#79

Post by unwind »

silvestrov wrote: post #59
112233 wrote: post #55

A bit OT, but why is ikea internet store (any country) designed to be so unusable? Lists of available components hidden in pdfs tucked in obscure menu, no way to find compatible components, search flooded with tens of thousands of "combinations" — I mean, they obviously know what they are doing. What is the goal of making it such way?

Also: why can't they show all sizes of a product jusst like when choosing t-shirt size on a normal shop? e.g. this dresser is available in many sizes but you wouldn't know from the product page: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/storklinta-3-drawer-chest-white... At best you can then search for "STORKLINTA" but the result list has the other sizes mixed with all sorts of other products such as beds: https://www.ikea.com/us…

It's not super hard to back up (using the "bread crumbs" on the page you linked), to "Dressers & chests of drawers", pop down the "Series" input selector, and pick STORKLINTA. That gets you [1] which I hope shows all the dressers of that name.

[1]: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/chests-of-drawers-10451/?filt...

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