"Just be furniture suppliers" (#170, Topic D)

When Sweden lost in the World Cup 2006 last week, some one offered a gratuitous remark, which I used as the title to this entry. Reading it in Washington Post, I thought this refers to IKEA; indeed it is. For 18 or so years when my wife and I were living in a house in Bethesda, we only visited IKEA once, in Woodbridge VA, 30+ miles away; the store's offerings apparently did not appeal to us, since we did not buy anything. Then, in 2005, we moved to a retirement community in Silver Spring, a 3-bedroom condominium, and we began to appreciate the value of space. To replace the dinette set in our house's kitchen, which we had to let go because it occupied too much space, our children and son-in-law accompanied us to visit IKEA -- it had, since our only visit to its Woodbridge store, opened a second one in College Park MD, less than 10 miles from Silver Spring. Suddenly, its offerings became very attractive to us. Now, I begin to understand why IKEA designed its furniture the way it did (straight corners, no ornamentation) -- they are intended for apartment dwellers where every inch of space is precious. We bought a dinette table that fits perfectly the kitchen corner in our condo, and three chairs -- our kitchen can accommodate only three chairs. Later, a good friend of my wife's suggested that we need to have (though not necessarily display) four chairs, so we went back (on our own, without being accompanied by family members) and bought a fourth -- it is still unwrapped, unassembled, and sits quietly in a closet. For additional storage area in the kitchen, my wife, on still another trip to IKEA, again accompanied by our children and son-in-law, found a perfect piece -- a horizontal, two-level affair, with four 13-1/2" x 13-1/2" x 13-1/2" hollow cubes on each level -- just shallow enough to allow access to the balcony from the kitchen, just deep enough to store cooking utensils and such, and just unobstrusive enough to be not-in-the-way -- straight cut, no ornamentation, sturdy, not bulky. Since there are more apartment dwellers than single-house occupiers in the world (and, perhaps, in USA as well), I can understand why IKEA is so successful. (Business Week has a favorable 8-page writeup of IKEA in its 11/14/05 issue.) Indeed, IKEA has a visible presence in China -- a tough market in which to compete, considering that IKEA had to pay, presumably, higher wages in Sweden, in addition to shipping charges. So, "just be furniture suppliers" must be interpreted not as a slight, but a compliment to Swedish entrepreneurship.