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Ikea has become synonymous with crisp efficiency, marrying minimalist aesthetics with minimal prices. Its suburban outposts are Gardens of Eden for discerning home-improvement where sleek new lifestyles can be purchased cheaply. But what are the actual costs of buying Ikea, and what are your real savings?

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Everything about Ikea seems structured towards alleviating pressure from your bank balance. Its mega-stores are cathedrals to thrifty beauty, ministered by a handful of staff on the edges of suburbia. Filled neatly with flat packages designed to maximize space on shelves and in transport, they lie within easy reach of new homes looking for an interior.

Its founder and spiritual compass is Ingvar Kamprad, whose net worth is estimated at 31 billion. Kamprad’s frugality is almost mythical, forever forgoing the usual trappings of wealth in favor of modest attire, economy travel and basic accommodation. Kamprad is an example to be emulated by the company he refers to as his family. In a phrase, The Ikea way.  This ideology is dispersed to the faithful through its bible, the Ikea catalogue, carrying items of affordable furniture with personable names, descendants of an armless chair called ‘Ruth’.

The economy of scale and volume coupled with corporate penny-pinching undoubtedly results in furniture at an impressively reduced price. Add an industrious consumer willing to attempt its construction and we seem to have unquestionable savings. 

But there is a caveat to these apparent savings, and it concerns the lifespan of Ikea furniture. People who have experienced the fiscal joys of buying Ikea often get to enjoy the frustration of an end product that wobbles slightly when touched, and breaks quickly when used. In fairness, Ikea has zero quality control over an integral stage of production, Assemblage, and as it is said, poor workmen blame their tools. However, it cannot be ignored that Ikea products have developed a reputation for having a short lifespan - from the store to the home, and then onto the footpath with the rest of the garbage. 

This process results in a condition called False Economy. While there may be the appearance of savings on the outset, when factoring in costs incurred through repair or replacement, the real savings to the consumer can become negated. When say, a chair is purchased from Ikea, its short lifespan will dictate another one needs to be purchased at a faster rate than chairs made with professional craftsmanship. Although more durable furniture might carry an initial price that is higher than Ikea’s, repeatedly purchasing Ikea products has an accumulative effect that is potentially higher.      

In addition, there is another aspect to this false economy: the amount of waste being generated. As Ikea furniture finds its way out to the curb and onto the landfill, local governments experience increased pressure for waste management. Pressure translates into a growing budget for collection, recycling and disposal. Recycling aside, landfills continue to be the most common destination for household refuse, and as these bulge, new ones are created at enormous financial cost. This pressure can be put back onto the citizen through increases in property-tax or pay-as-you-go systems. Pay-as-you-go has been increasingly adopted by local governments, charging households by the garbage bag and shifting the costs more directly onto the individual.

Yet, perhaps focusing on the costs fails to recognize the wider economic benefits of the Ikea way. As you faithfully replace your Ikea furniture by going back to the source, their stock is reduced. Obviously this results in an order to the factory, which increases its productivity, motivation to expand, employment of new workers, et cetera. With increased employment there are more consumers in general and the cycle starts in other industries. During this recession national governments have sought to reenergize this cycle by injecting cash into the economy.     

But are the economic benefits of mass consumerism adequate, or is it another example of false economy? The development of this consumer culture is pegged somewhere around the turn of the nineteenth-century, when luxury goods became the prized means of acquiring status, replacing non-commodities such as retinues. This change was significant as luxury goods only bestowed status within prevailing fashions, and so had to be renewed constantly. As civilizations became urbanized and industrialized, cheap goods and the demand for them grew exponentially. However, consumerism was being fostered in a very different world, where markets were rapidly expanding and the problems of waste management had not yet appeared. Perhaps now, some 300 years later, a redress of mass consumerism is needed to identify what is beneficial, and what is false economy. {w}

life on a dime: volume i, issue vi

 

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