Ikea needs renovation? part 2

I agree:

article

Why Conran must think outside the shopping box
Ian Watson

DESIGN guru Sir Terence Conran thinks a trip to an Ikea store is about as appealing as a holiday in Baghdad. At Ikea, people suffer “horrible experiences”, he says. Poor Conran. Surely there are more important things to complain about than enduring a visit to Ikea, such as the state of London’s underground, the £5.9bn (E8.7bn, $10.4bn) overspend on defence equipment by MoD civil servants, or even the competence of Sir Iain Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police.

Never having ever been near an Ikea store, I’ll take Conran’s word for it that they’re very crowded and that there are long queues at the check-out desks, just as there are at our airports and railway stations.

Of course to people like Conran, and retailers like Stuart Rose of Marks & Spencer, shopping these days has to be more than just buying a new three-piece suite, a dress, or the week’s groceries. It has to be “an experience”. What tosh. People in their hundreds of thousands visit Ikea and come back again and again to buy furniture that is well designed and value for money. You don’t hear Tesco’s Terry Leahy wittering on about customers enjoying “the shopping experience” at his stores.

Some readers may remember Barbara Hulanicki’s huge Biba art deco emporium in Kensington, London, which was designed to give customers a shopping experience they would never forget. But they did forget the “magic and show business of retail”, as Hulanicki herself described it, and Biba folded in 1975. The toy store Hamleys is one of the most uncomfortable places in London to shop, but the reason it is successful and packed with shoppers is that it offers a range of toy products unmatched by any other store. So does Ikea.

Conran, who created the wonderful Habitat store (now part of Ikea), has written to Ikea’s founder, Invgar Kamprud, pleading with him to put up Ikea’s prices. This, he thinks, would stop ordinary folk going there, clogging up the stores, and leave more space for those of a more artistic bent to appreciate the aesthetics of flatpack furniture.

Ikea is one of the most successful retail concepts ever. Kamprad should write back telling Conran to stop being so silly.