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Why is IKEA furniture so affordable?

ikea is great if you're just moving out on your own and need things like a bed, table and chairs, sofa, other things mom and dad generally supplied in the past. you can easy outfit an entire apartment for under $2000, then later on start replacing with more quality items. they even have things like a "kitchen in a box" which will give you things like can openers, measuring cups, plates, utensils, everything you'll need for something like $80. i went with this originally then slowing replaced everything piece by piece with red kitchenaid gadgets.

if you're looking for stylish stuff to get you going in your first place, ikea's perfect. don't expect heirloom quality and you won't be disappointed. i've had many ikea things for years and they're holding up just fine, maybe even better than my one splurge on antique table and chairs.
 
Forgot to mention that the only reason I like going to Ikea is for the Hot Dogs, ice creams and meatballs! I think they place that "fun" stuff there at the end to distract you from the f(*()*g soul-destroying experience it is shopping there.

It's the kind of eternal sunshine nostalgic kiddy food that says, "You're not in crap furniture hell, you're at a carnival. Yippeee."
 
tjcampbell said:
Forgot to mention that the only reason I like going to Ikea is for the Hot Dogs, ice creams and meatballs! I think they place that "fun" stuff there at the end to distract you from the f(*()*g soul-destroying experience it is shopping there.

It's the kind of eternal sunshine nostalgic kiddy food that says, "You're not in crap furniture hell, you're at a carnival. Yippeee."
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Your local IKEA must be horrible. I love mine.
One thing I have noticed is how everyone around here actually uses the word kötbullar, instead of the translation. I've never heard them referred to as meatballs before.
 
Your bed is a rather important piece of furniture. I would consider splurging on the bed over other furniture. Have you checked out Overstock.com? They sell a lot of solid wood furniture at great prices, and the shipping is always a few dollars, regardless of order size. I've purchased several pieces of furniture from Overstock, and have been very satisfied. Good luck!
 
BiTurboMunkie said:
don't get an ikea bed if you plan on doing anything more than sleeping.
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Hey if it's good enough for 1/10 Europeans to be conceived on them...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4254181.stm

But seriously, if you avoid the bottom tier loss-leader crap IKEA furniture can hold up quite well. e.g. in college we had some of the aforementioned sagging bookshelves, but the Billy's we replaced them with are going strong and were about 1/3 the price of "real" furniture that is still mostly particle board & cardboard, just preassembled.

B
 
digitalnicotine said:
Your bed is a rather important piece of furniture. I would consider splurging on the bed over other furniture. Have you checked out Overstock.com? They sell a lot of solid wood furniture at great prices, and the shipping is always a few dollars, regardless of order size. I've purchased several pieces of furniture from Overstock, and have been very satisfied. Good luck!
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the most comfortable mattresses i've ever slept on were from ikea. we have a $3000 set from one of the big ones, sealy or simmons i think, it's way too soft and i get a sore back all the time, plus after a couple years it's sagging in the middle. my ex's $250 ikea mattress was MUCH more comfortable. also, lots of places now are making memory foam mattresses, knock-off "tempurpedics." my parents have a queen size they got at costco for about $500.

i agree that a mattress should not be decided on before trying, but ikea actually has some good ones, so take a look. i will never buy another innerspring mattress after having slept on foam. it doesn't sag in the middle or squeak and they last much longer.

as for the bed frame, that really doesn't make a difference. i have a $99 daybed (with a $99 foam mattresss) and a queen size both from ikea. the queen size is solid wood as well, ikea DOES make a lot of solid wood pieces, they're not as cheap as the particle board stuff, but still very reasonably priced.

plus i'm a big fan of shopping the as-is section :D you can find so many good things there that are just missing packaging or have some light damage in an area you can't see. the queen sized bed came from as-is, it had a crack in the headboard, under the level of where the mattress sits, so once it was put together you couldn't see it. it was originally somewhere around $350 and i got it for about $80.
 
Shotglass said:
Your local IKEA must be horrible.
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Ikea's the same everywhere in the world mate... well except in Canada cus you can't get beer/wine there.

I'm not saying Ikea's a terrible, I'm just acknowledging that everything I have had of theirs has broken and overall it's a stressful shopping experience compared to any other furniture store.
 
Because they use the cheapest material available, and they use very basic and standardized connectors to put it together. Oh, and they do production runs of furniture that keeps the machine set up times minimal.

Just as a "for example", I just build my kid a 36"x48" play table with two rolling carts that fit beneath it for toy storage. I used solid 3/4" oak and 1/2" birch plywood. The material costs alone were about $200. I put about 20 hours of labor into it. Now, if I had a few more clamps, had the templates for the legs already made, and owned an HVLP spray gun, I could probably have knocked that time down to about 12 hours. With some practice, I bet I could even get it down to less than 10 hours. But even at that, I'd have to sell that table for $500 to make it worth my time. And very few people would be willing to pay that for their kid's play table. If I could make them 100 or 1000 at a time, I'd do even better.

That's why IKEA stuff sells. The alternatives are pricier, and for good reason.
 
Mostly everything in my bedroom is from IKEA, I like it because it looks good, and it was fairly cheap for the entire set. I believe that it is cheap because you have to build the furniture yourselves, and also that it is made in China.
 
I don't shop at IKEA anymore because I find them less affordable than they used to be.

For the same price, I can find really good quality beautiful furniture if I shop around a little.
 
Because they mass-build DIY kits with particleboard.

IKEA offers a lot of stuff that's kind of "out there", and a lot of stuff other companies don't make, or at least don't do very well. And, of course, their prices are generally very low.
 
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