It’s a pleasant, contented life inside the world of IKEA. So smile. No, seriously, smile. Don’t stop. Ever.

This short film by Jeroen Houben explores a madness kept in place with Allen screws.

-via The Hairpin | Director’s Website

Sorry, guys, but this shopping trip to IKEA is going to take longer than you think. The woman in your life would like to spend a looooooong time looking at various options. Why? I have no idea, but this particular IKEA offers an alternative to the tedium. Manland is an in-house temporary daycare center that keeps men occupied with snacks and pinball machines while the ladies shop.

Link -via DVICE

Ladies, does your man have a short retail attention span? Well, he no longer has any valid excuse for not going shopping with you now that IKEA has a dedicated room for your retail-phobic boyfriend or husband:

MÄNLAND is being trialled for four days this Father's Day weekend as a male-only play space to hang out in while wives and girlfriends peruse the aisles.

Publicity manager Jude Leon said the idea was modelled on the Swedish furniture giant’s existing child play area, SMALAND.

Ms Leon said women were given a buzzer to remind them to collect their other half after 30 minutes of shopping.

Sexist? Maybe. Genius? Definitely. Link - via The Week

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Things You Didn't Know About IKEA

This Twaggie was illustrated by Cecile Dyer from a Tweet by @derekasaurus. Like all Twaggies, it can be purchased on a t-shirt or print. Link

The demise of books has been foretold by many pundits, but perhaps the writing is now on the wall ... or in this case, the bookshelf. Specifically, the IKEA bookshelf.

John Biggs of TechCrunch wrote:

If you needed any more proof that the age of dead-tree books is over take a look at these alarming style changes at Ikea: the furniture manufacturer’s iconic BILLY bookcase – the bookcase that everyone put together when they got their first apartment and, inevitably, pounded the nails wrong into – is becoming deeper and more of a curio cabinet. Why? Because Ikea is noticing that customers no longer buy them for books.

This isn’t quite the canary in the coal mine – think of it as a slight tickle in the mine foreman’s throat – but all signs are pointing to the end of the physical book. There are plenty of analogs to this situation. When’s the last time you saw a casette tape rack sold outside of Odd Lots? What about the formal “stereo cabinet” with plenty of room for records? What about Virgin Megastores?

As much as it pains me to say this and as horrible as it sounds, the book is leaving us.

Link | More from The Economist

Inevitably, you’ll open your toolbox and find three Gungans but not a single Torx wrench.

At the link: Doctor Who, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park.

Link | Cartoonist’s Website

IKEA is the world’s largest furniture store. In fact, the company is so big, it is estimated that around 10% of all Europeans alive today were conceived on an IKEA bed. Despite its success though, the company still has quite a few dark secrets, as well as a number of interesting trivia bits. Whether you love the flat-pack manufacturer or hate it, these 10 facts about the company are certain to spark your interest in the things that happen behind the scenes of IKEA.

Image via Calvin Teo [Wikipedia]

1. The Store Was Created By A Nazi Sympathizer. Founder Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943. He was only seventeen at the time. At the same time, he was also directly involved with fund-raising and recruitment for the New Swedish Movement, a pro-fascist, anti-Semitist group that emphasized Swedish Nationalism. When the matter came out in 1994, Kamprad claimed it was the biggest mistake of his life. He apologized for his involvement with the group and wrote a letter to every Jewish employee on his staff to personally apologize for his actions. Even so, the issue caused a minor controversy when IKEA opened its first store in Israel. In the end, the country seemed to forgive him and IKEA is now one of only a handful of companies to have stores in both Israel and other Muslim Middle Eastern countries.



Image via yassan-yukky [Flickr]

2. It Is Technically A Charity. If Nazism wasn’t bad enough, IKEA is also has one of the most elaborate tax evasion schemes of any company that still manages to operate within the law. IKEA is owned by INGKA Holding B.V., a Dutch corporation that is controlled by a non-profit Dutch foundation known as the Stichting Ingka Foundation, which was founded by Kamprad in 1982. This Foundation is headed by a five-person committee that includes Kamprad, his wife, and his attorney. IKEA’s intellectual property is owned by Inter IKEA Systems, which is owned, indirectly, by the Inerogo Foundation, which is also controlled by Kamprad and his family. IKEA has to pay 3% of its profits to the foundation to license its own trademarks. Because IKEA is owned by charities, none of its profits are taxed, making the Ingka Foundation the largest charity in the world, with a net worth of $36 billion. Of course, the charity isn’t nearly as generous as most (being as how it’s mostly just a tax evasion strategy), so it only gave away $65 million in 2010. To put that in perspective, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has a net worth of $33 billion and they give away around $1.5 billion per year. The whole scheme is pretty complex, so if you want to read more about it, I recommend checking out this great Mental Floss article on the issue.
3. The Name Is Actually An Acronym. While most people assume IKEA is just a Swedish word or a nonsense word like Kodak, it is actually an acronym with close ties to Ingvar Kamprad’s heart. The letters stand for his initials, the initial for the farm he grew up in, Elmtaryd, and the town the farm was located in, Agunnaryd.



Image via DrJohnBullas [Flickr]

4. They Have A Very Specific Way Of Naming Products. Because Kamprad is dyslexic, he found it extremely difficult to manage an inventory that was made up of product codes, so he instead decided to name everything with words instead. I always thought that the products names were all Swedish words describing the objects, but as it turns out, that only applies to a handful of kitchen items. For the most part, all items are named according to a system developed by IKEA where each type of item carries a different name origin. For example, dining tables and chairs generally are named after places in Finland. Carpets are named after places in Denmark. For more examples, check out this article in The Guardian.
5. They Also Sell Houses. Ready to buy a new home? If you live in Scandinavia or the UK, don’t head to a real estate agent, head to IKEA and grab a flat-pack house for a fraction of the cost. The BoKlok houses were originally released in Sweden in 1996, and have since expanded to IKEA stores across Northern Europe.
6. Their Catalog Is More Popular Than The Bible. Ok, maybe that’s a little misleading, but every year, there are almost three times more copies of the catalog printed than the bible. They started printing the catalog in 1951 and it has since taken on a life of its own, consuming a full 70% of the companies marketing budget every year and developing a devoted fan base of people who analyze the images looking for obscure books in the bookshelves, Mickey Mouse references and cats hiding in the fake households. There are now 55 editions printed in 27 languages every year.
7. You Can Buy Their Merchandise For Your Virtual Family. If you’re running out of space in your home for all the great IKEA stuff you want, maybe you should consider shopping for your virtual home instead. Since 2008, players of The Sims 2 have had the chance to purchase the IKEA Home Stuff pack and deck out their character’s houses with the décor.



Image via thekellyscope [Flickr]

8. The Store Really Is A Big Deal. Most of you have probably become used to IKEA and no longer consider the store all that special, but for many people, the chance to shop in the Swedish furniture store is an exciting occasion –particularly when they are offering $150 gift certificates to the first people who shop there. This exact promotion actually lead to the trampling deaths of three people when the store opened in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 2004.
9. It Can Be A Great Way For Parents To Get A Break. Many stores offer free daycare centers with playgrounds and beepers that can be used to contact the parent if the child needs mommy or daddy before they finish shopping. Stressed out parents can then easily enjoy a nice meal, a nap in one of the bedroom displays or, you know, an actual shopping trip knowing their little ones are safe and secure within the same building.
10. They Were The First Company To Feature A Gay Relationship In a Commercial. While the commercial only ran once in 1994, it was still a big deal for such a major company to release an ad with a homosexual couple. Since then, the company had ran a number of ads targeting the gay community, including one of the first ads to feature a transgender person.

Do you like the company or hate it? More to the point, have you changed your opinion after learning about Kamprad’s dirty secrets or about their progressive ads targeted to homosexuals?

Sources: Wikipedia and Mental Floss

What was the purpose for Stonehenge? Was it a calendar, an observatory, or a sacrificial site? These suggestions by archaeologists assume that it was a completed design instead of a project left half-finished because the assembly instructions were provided by IKEA. Justin Pollard, John Lloyd and Stevyn Colgan composed a cartoon illustrating this explanation. This is the first panel; the latter stages seem to involve magic and heavy drinking.

Link via The Presurfer

Katja’s hamster Fred has a home to die for, for a hamster. Katja converted an Ikea Expedit bookcase into a multi-level hamster home featuring a different room for each activity. Fred has a large room for running, stairs and ladders to traverse, a room to burrow in, a room to take a dust bath in, a room to eat in, variable lighting, and plenty of places in which to explore and play. See more pictures and find out how it was done at Pawesome. Link

Ever been lost in an IKEA store? It’s not your fault – turns out the store was actually designed like a maze. Why? Elementary, my dear Watson: it’s so you shop more!

The home furnishing chain’s mazy layouts are a psychological weapon to part shoppers from their cash, an expert in store design claims. The theory is that while following a zig-zag trail between displays of minimalist Swedish furniture, a disorientated Ikea customer feels ­compelled to pick up a few extra impulse purchases.

According to Alan Penn, director of the Virtual Reality Centre for the Built Environment at University College London, Ikea’s strategy is similar to that of out-of-town retail parks – keep customers inside for as long as they can.

‘In Ikea’s case, you have to follow a set path past what is effectively their catalogue in physical form, with furniture placed in different settings which is meant to show you how adaptable it is,’ he said. ‘By the time you get to the warehouse where you can actually buy the stool or whatever’s caught your eye, you’re so impressed by how cheap it is that you end up getting it.’

Link

Our friends over at Cool Material have come up with a very fitting tribute to the IKEA furniture purchase.  The only thing I can add is that I always seem to get lost in IKEA and can’t figure out how to escape!   Link

Everyone who’s ever had to put together some furniture from IKEA would chuckle at Carl Kleiner’s series of photographs, which are to be used for the upcoming IKEA baking cookbook: Link – via Laughing Squid and Boing Boing

What would happen if you release 100 cats in your local IKEA store? That’s exactly what the Herding Cats Experiment is all about:

These are not specially trained film cats. No one knew what they would do. … A team of animal handlers are on site along with 5 film crews to capture all the action. They went into every little hole, crevice, every dark bit which is great because we have some infrared night vision camera which gives you these lovely shots when these went right to the dark corners …

Check out the video clips at Geekosystem: Link

Next up: 100 snakes! Are you listening, IKEA?

We’ve all contemplated that nightmare scenario: you’re trapped in an IKEA store after closing, the cold of winter is seeping into your bones, and worst of all, a pack timber wolves is starting to circle around you. You need to start a fire now. But how? This video by Vimeo user Helmet tells you how to start a fire with nothing more than the products you can find in an IKEA store.

via reddit

The Swedish furniture retailer IKEA has an interesting showcase in Paris. They display some of their furniture collections at four major metro stations, allowing people to try out the products instead of only seeing them as prints on the walls.

Link – via Pusha

As crowds rushed to find deals at the Emeryville, CA IKEA store, one of them had a plan other than shopping.  Michelle Pred was actually placing her artwork, complete with working IKEA barcodes, into the inventory, an act she calls “shopdropping.”  Unlike shoplifting, she isn’t breaking any laws, and IKEA pocketed the money.  It’s all a statement by the artist.

In Pred’s case, the statement is “You Are What You Buy,” which also happens to be the title of the prints she shopdropped, a commentary on excessive consumerism on a day where excessive consumerism practically is celebrated.  She says that as a conceptual artist, she valued the opportunity to make a statement about society over the chance to make money. The shopdrop itself, in fact, is part of the piece.

Pred gained national attention in 2002 when she made art out of knives and nail-cutters snagged by security at local airports. In 2006 she attempted to demystify the cannabis plant by growing one in a San Francisco gallery.

The signed, limited edition prints were marked and sold for $8.00 each.  The same prints can be bought in Pred’s studio for $200.  Story at Link.
Artist’s website

Ever wonder how IKEA makes their furniture sturdy yet light? The secret is the honeycomb skeleton inside their tabletops. National Geographic went inside an IKEA factory in Poland: Link

While that’s nifty and all, there’s an even stranger IKEA phenomenon: Chinese people love to go there, not to shop, but simply to hang around!

With no plans one Saturday, Zhang Xin told his wife, son and mother to wear something smart and hop into the family sedan. He could have taken them to the Forbidden City or the Great Wall, but he decided on another popular destination — IKEA.

Riding an escalator past a man lying on a display bed with a book opened on his belly, the clan sauntered into the crush of visitors squeezing onto the showroom path, bumping elbows and nicking ankles with their yellow shopping trolleys.

Zhang said the family needed a respite from the smog and a reliable lunch.

"We just came here for fun," said the 34-year-old office manager. "I suppose we could have gone somewhere else, but it wouldn’t have been a complete experience."

Welcome to IKEA Beijing, where the atmosphere is more theme park than store.

David Pierson of the LA Times has the intriguing story: Link – via Look At This

Link via ikea hacker

I mean, if you find cockroaches cuddly. Or is it a roly poly? I don’t know what this thing is supposed to be, and I can’t find it on the IKEA site. All I know is that I was simultaneously repulsed and amused when I saw a big bin of these at IKEA the other day, so I snapped a picture. His mouth zips open, so he can be used for storage or as a purse or something. I thought about getting this for a friend’s upcoming baby shower, but then decided she probably wouldn’t appreciate the gesture.

I’m torn. What do you guys think – funny? Creepy? Or both?

Anyway, there’s something about the cheap but cool stuff at IKEA that inspires people to hack it and create something completely different than its intended purpose. I suppose because the stuff is so cheap, you don’t feel bad if your experiment goes wrong. That’s where IKEA Hacker comes in.

One IKEA Hacker reader turned these mere salad bowls into wooden speakers, and I think the result is quite pretty.

Link via Not Martha

TheraminTrees and his brother QualiaSoup collaborated to make this interesting animation called Instruction Manual for Life. There’s an unmistakeable (truthful/heavy-handed/blasphemous? Take your pick) message in there – which you don’t have to agree with – but all I could think of when watching the clip was all those IKEA cabinets I built over the years!

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Bruce!

IKEA is definitely nicer than my house… well, maybe not nicer, but definitely cleaner and more organized. So it makes total sense to have a party there, which is exactly what the people at Cockeyed did. Dinner at the buffet (why not? I could always go for their Swedish meatballs), then on to various dining tables and living rooms to play BananaGrams, Boggle and Catchphrase. Looks like a good time was had by all.