If Ikea had known how the boom was going to end, it might not have gone ahead with the Dublin mega-branch it has been planning for nearly a decade. Yet when it opens the store to shoppers on Monday, its non-elitist image could capture the changed public mood, writes PAUL CULLEN, consumer affairs correspondent.
BEFORE ME on the desk is a small, smart yellow lamp powered by solar cells. I bought it in Dublin this week for just over €20. For every lamp sold I understand another lamp is being sent, through Unicef, to children in refugee camps in Pakistan.
I, like millions before me, have been seduced by Ikea. I realise I haven’t just bought a lamp – I’ve bought (into) a way of living. My lamp is design-cool and environmentally friendly. It seems to be helping to make the world a better place and I am happy to share in the credit, even if I never intended to buy it before entering Ikea’s new store on Wednesday for a sneak preview. And if it packs up, I won’t lose any sleep, because it didn’t cost the Earth.
From 11am this Monday, when the store opens its doors to the public, Irish shoppers will get their own opportunity to be seduced – or repulsed – by the mammoth Swedish retailer’s offering of cheap, chic and contemporary home furnishings and accessories. For many, Ikea represents shopping heaven, an all-under-one-roof collection of everything you could ever want for your home at standout low prices; for others, the company stands for baleful standardisation and the worst of the reductive consumer culture.
Of course, thousands of us have already trekked to Ikea stores in Scotland, England and, latterly, Belfast to kit out our living quarters. By now, many Irish people are familiar with the vast showrooms, the ubiquitous navy-and-yellow livery, the endless aisles in the warehouse and the Swedish meatballs in the canteen. We have struggled to assemble flatpack furniture armed with nothing more than an Allen key, a wordless set of instructions and a passing acquaintance with DIY.
None of this is likely to deter the flow of shoppers to a giant, windowless box off the M50 more than six times the size of any other retail outlet in the Republic. Expect traffic congestion on the half-finished approach roads on Monday as well as the hoopla and promotions that are the hallmark of any Ikea store opening. Hopefully, no one will be injured (as they were in London in 2005 when customers stampeded to pick up bargains) or even killed (three people were crushed to death during a store opening in Saudi Arabia in 2004).
MONDAY’S OPENING BRINGS to an end the longest wait in Irish retail history, after almost a decade of lobbying, preparation and construction. In that time, the boom has come and gone, leaving some to wonder if the tide hasn’t gone out on Ikea’s core market. For the years of the property spike, many travelled to Ikea stores abroad to kit out their rapidly appreciating and multiplying homes and investments; today, those fully furnished accommodations are worth a fraction of their former value, few of us can afford to move or revamp our houses and the construction industry is at a standstill.
Even Ikea itself has put a halt to its global gallop, with 5,000 job cuts and a decision to slow the rate of new store openings. Octogenarian founder Ingvar Kamprad told a Swedish newspaper this month that more redundancies would be needed, with sales 7 per cent below target and profits contracting. It was clear this week that if the company had foreseen the depths to which the Irish economy would sink, it would never have gone ahead with the new store in Dublin.
Those who have not before ventured into an Ikea outlet are likely to be gobsmacked by their visit. It’s not just the scale of the store, but the sweep of its ambition. Ikea stores have more in common with attractions such as zoos or large garden centres than shops; they are destinations for a day out, where cheap and cheerful eating and putting the kids in the creche are as important as the shopping.
Ikea embraces our lifestyle rather than just selling us products; each stage of our lives is mapped out in the “living situations” that fill the cavernous showrooms. As anthropologist Dr Pauline Garvey points out, there is a “museological” feel to walking around an Ikea store; it’s as if you are browsing through an art gallery or inspecting a stage set rather than plodding through a shop. Indeed, Ikea’s store in Stockholm is modelled on New York’s Guggenheim Museum.
Garvey has carried out research into the Ikea phenomenon as part of work funded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, and will be interviewing Irish shoppers in Ballymun next week. She is struck by how positively customers respond to their experience of shopping there.
“People don’t talk about how much they have spent, but how much they saved,” she says. “They speak approvingly of Ingvar Kamprad’s thrifty ways, how he travels on budget airlines and so on, even while they are being spendthrift in his stores.”
Ikea is not associated with cultural homogenisation or corporate greed to the same extent as other multinationals, she argues. In Sweden, Ikea is intrinsic to democracy, providing low-cost furniture for the many with an egalitarian, non-elitist message (you won’t see suits on Ikea staff, not even on managers). Garvey believes Ikea is coming to Ireland at an interesting time, and asks: “Is Ikea arriving in Ireland at just the right time to capitalise on the evolving public mood? Will its Swedishness tick all the right boxes for democracy, inexpensive style, minimalism and an ‘acceptable’ face of modern consumer culture?”
Meanwhile, the rest of the furniture trade is putting a brave face on the new monster in its midst. “I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t trepidation out there,” says Oliver Maloney, who runs Instore, a family-owned chain of six furniture shops. “People will flock to Ikea and spend money there – and then they’ll spring back to shops that offer personal service and know your name.”
He points out that the Ikea model involves the customer doing at least half the work, from driving long distances, bringing purchased items home and then self-assembling. “If you’ve made the long journey from Cork or Dublin, the last thing you want is to find a screw missing or to have to deal with a service person up in Dublin on the phone.”
Maloney says Irish tastes are distinctive and he points to the failure of UK retailers, such as Courts, to make an impact here. The carnage in the trade is already huge, though it’s hard to know what part the imminent arrival of Ikea played in the demise of companies such as Habitat (owned by Ikea itself), Land of Leather and Jim Langan Furniture. Sales of giftware and homeware are down 27 per cent in the past two years, according to the Central Statistics Office. Retail Excellence Ireland (REI) says that 80 furniture and giftware businesses have closed over this period and there is no sign of an upturn.
“People are nervous. Ikea is a global player and it will hoover up business, Walmart-style,” says David Fitzsimons, REI’s chief executive. “And because it’s a destination retailer, it’s not just business locally which will be affected.”
Barry Sheehan, past president of the Institute of Designers in Ireland, is hoping Irish designers will get a boost from Ikea’s arrival. “We don’t all want to live in an Ikea house,” he says. “Once the products become ubiquitous, people might focus more on buying unique or bespoke items from Irish designers.”
The hallmark of Ikea products is clean and modern design, he adds, and this can only have a positive effect on Irish tastes. “If it wasn’t for Ikea,” British design magazine Icon has written, “most people would have no access to affordable contemporary design.” However, Sheehan believes quality varies: “They do lighting and other complex stuff very well, but I’m not so sure about their kitchens.”
IT IS IRONIC that Ikea has taken so long to reach our shores given the lengths to which the authorities have gone to lure the company here. Even during the boom years, the company’s promise of a €100 million investment and 500 jobs was music to political ears. Existing planning guidelines, which capped the size of retail warehouses to 6,000sq m, were lifted in 2005 specifically with a view to ensuring that Ikea could build one of its 31,500sq m outlets in Ballymun.
The clear impression given at the time – certainly by the Government – was that Ikea wanted to build one store on the island of Ireland and that if it couldn’t open in the Republic because of planning restrictions, it would do so in the North. It is doubly ironic, then, that in spite of the planning exemption from the Government, from Monday there will be two Ikea stores on the island. The Belfast outlet opened in November 2007.
Fingal County Council, which will benefit from the rates payable by Ikea, was always in favour of the project, but An Bord Pleanála imposed 30 conditions, 13 of which related to traffic, when it granted planning permission in 2007. The most important of these required the upgrading works on the Ballymun interchange of the M50 to be completed before the store could open. These won’t be finished until late autumn, yet the council is allowing the store to open next week. A new slip-road to the store is due to be completed this weekend, and this and other improvements are sufficient, the council believes, to deal with traffic.
Hardly surprisingly, Ikea has its detractors. There are complaints about quality and customer service, awkward questions about Kamprad's pro-Nazi activities as a teenager and criticisms of secretive and Byzantine tax arrangements. For some, most notably writer Chuck Palahniuk in his book Fight Club, "Ikea man" is a term of abuse for a browbeaten, henpecked consumer – think Edward Norton in the early part of the film, before he meets Brad Pitt. "The things you own end up owning you," Norton intones, with his Ikea furniture clearly in mind. "It's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything." Tell that to the people in Ballymun next Monday.
Joining the smiley gang who man the flat-packs
WHO WOULDN’T want to work for Ikea? It all looks so shiny and happy. Checking out the recruitment page of the Ikea Ireland website before it closed for applications, you were greeted by a screenful of jolly badges: a big yellow smiley, a montage of international flags, a mock-knitted badge proclaiming “togetherness” and a black-on-green silhouette of a wind turbine. There was a picture of laughing employees horsing around with cushions. “At Ikea we know that work is only one part of your life,” purred the blurb. “To be one of us, you have to be yourself.”
You get the message. When the socially responsible and eco-friendly furniture giant opens in Ballymun on Monday, you want to be there, manning the flat-packs, talking knowledgeably about Billy and Liatorp, Flört and Bodo, and wearing your yellow shirt with pride.
Many hundreds of people responded to Ikea’s call. More than 4,500 applied for just 50 supervisor jobs in the Republic’s first store, while a further 4,000 hopefuls – many of them third-level graduates – lined up at the Ballymun Civic Centre to inquire about 280 entry-level jobs.
What’s the big appeal? Those badges on the website give you the clue. This is a company that is proud of its humility, styling itself as a “corporate company based on shared values”. Founded in Sweden in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea makes much of its rustic origins in Småland, Kamprad’s birthplace: “Småland can be easily identified as the source of our shared values. Simplicity, humility, thrift and responsibility . . . ” As Ikea Ireland’s human resources manager Sharon Moran put it: “We’re all co-workers. We have open-plan offices, we all wear a co-worker uniform and our name badges only have our first names. We’re a very humble company.”
Don’t worry if you screw up on your first day either – you probably won’t be carpeted by the boss (sorry, co-worker). Kamprad himself takes a benevolent view, having said: “Only those who are asleep make no mistakes.” Such warm-hearted homilies and “sacred concepts” are everywhere in Ikea and it is all either unbearably trite or wonderfully uplifting, depending on where you’re coming from.
So is working for Ikea as good as it looks? The company scores well on its individually tailored training schemes, flexible scheduling and staff discounts. As a co-worker, you might even get a surprise corporate gift, as when the company gave each of its 9,000 UK co-workers a Christmas present of a folding bike.
And there are plenty of contented employees out there. A former UK-based employee praises Ikea’s “great company culture with flat hierarchies and uncomplicated communication”.
The main gripe among co-workers, past and present, is pay, considered to be on the low side. The majority of those entry-level jobs in Ballymun have a starting wage of €9.40 per hour. And, depending on your role in the company, the work can be physically demanding.
While many co-workers cheerfully embrace Kamprad’s “philosophy of living”, some find it makes them fretful: “Stop forcing this ‘Ingvar is God’ attitude and mentality,” protests one. “This is a retail store, not a cult, not a religion. People don’t have to bow down to Ingvar or his philosophies in order to be good, conscientious, hard-working employees.”
Fionola Meredith