IKEA to Open Its First U.S Manufacturing Facility

Swedwood, the industrial group within IKEA, announced on April 30 that its Danville, Va. manufacturing facility will open officially on May 21, 2008. - More here

While this may be the first official IKEA run factory, they have many US Manufacturers who make items for them already, I believe Sauder or Bush Furntiture does some work for them as well… for IEKA to build a factory in a recession, when their profits are down just shows thier dedication to the US market and their intent on it growing it. YAY!

Bye bye bags…

Charging for plastic bags has been a success in cutting waste! The Results are in…Over 92% of IKEA Customers Bagged the Plastic Bag!

IKEA will stop offering plastic “one use” bags in the coming year. Only the reusable “Big Blue Bags” will be offered as of October 2008.

Now, I think IKEA needs to come up with a portable design solution to help you store all your Big Blue Bags in style!

Not Ohio related but…

I wasn't going to post this until next week but as Craig at the Huffington Post has popped the news early, and since yours truly helped make this happen by getting him in some contacts within IKEA to start the ball rolling, I'll put this up too. 

NEW YORK - Mark Malkoff, a filmmaker and comedian whose video "171 Starbucks" documented his visits to all of the coffee chain's Manhattan stores in a single day, will live in an IKEA store in Paramus, N.J., for an entire week starting Monday, Jan. 7.

"My apartment has to be fumigated and I need to move out for several days," said Malkoff, 31. "All of my friends have tiny studio apartments. Hotels in the city are too expensive. My apartment is 80 percent IKEA products anyway. Moving into an IKEA store makes sense."

Miraculously, IKEA has agreed to let Malkoff live in its Paramus store for the week. Each night, Malkoff will post a video recap of his day at MarkLivesInIKEA.com, which will be up beginning Jan. 7.

"This isn't a commercial for IKEA," Malkoff said. "They are not paying me to do this. To me, it made sense for my living circumstance and I thought it would make an interesting video. IKEA is giving me 100 percent creative control of the video content, which is pretty amazing."

 

It is! I was happy to help! I'll be on the site everyday! 

The 2008 Catalog is out!

 At least the online version is!
The print should be coming out this month.

Groundbreaking Press Release

Midwest Distribution Center Announced

Ikea planning distribution center in Joliet, IL. This will be the distribution center for Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio (YAY!) and whoever else is to come in the region I’m sure.

“Ikea expects to open a 650,000-square-foot distribution center as early as spring 2009, and said the site has the capacity to be expanded by another 770,000 square feet.” Holy moley.

Over a year or so ago I had reported a rumor that they had been sniffing in Ohio for this. It looks like they wanted the rail route more than the interstate route.

It was nice to see West Chester’s eventual opening mentioned though, it’s been so long staring at a ig plot of land with a long pond on it, so long which out major news, I’m kinda going into withdrawl. I’m not shaking or drooling yet, but the twitches are certainly present.

In other news, in the next week or so I’m going to be moving this blog to a new blogging software, and onto the ohikea.com domain (I’ve just been redirecting from there until now). So if you visit and it looks odd, or something, don’t panic. All is well, and soon will be even better!

Bag the bags

IKEA US to charge us for bags in it’s workdwide effort to reduce them landing in landfills.

This is something they have been doing internationally for a while now, but they are now unleashing it here in the states. And since our store is yet to be built, it will effect us, so thus why I’m putting it here.

I personally am okay with it, it’s 5 cents. Woop. The plastic bags they have are MONSTROUS and easily worth it the nickle. You could bury a gangster in one. So asking five cents for them making you think about if you really need it or not is fine by me. They probably cost them 5 cents anyway, they are that big.

But - and here comes the point whizzing into the lead from behind - they also sell, these equally (if not more - monsterous but reuseable shopping bags made of, basically, woven blue plastic tarp. They normally sell these things for 99 cents but are lowering them to a 59 cents. That’s cool because they are actually useful for more than shopping at IKEA.

I personally have these things all over my house. I use them for camping (they hold TWO sleeping bags!) I use them for packing odds and ends when traveling around on weekends. I keep one in each car for when you have grocery bag blowouts or just need a way to carry in a awkward object when lazy and short on hands. I kinda have these things stashed everywhere.

Hell I even have one filled with IKEA catalogs from the last trek to Detroit. Which leads me to this… WANT A CATALOG? I know some folks still can’t seem to get one, and this time of year you almst can’t get them to send you one at all. I have like 20, muahahah!

Email me back and we’ll talk shipping annd junk, all I’ll ask is the cost of mailing.

Make your bed, make $5K

Ika Announces contest for customers to make a video of them making their bed. The price is $5,000.

When I first read this I thought it was saying film a video of you making a bed (as in assembling) then I realized it was just making your bed (as in tidying up the sheets and shooing the dog away). I’m not sure in either case I want million of people seeing my bedroom.

And my bed is NOT IKEA at all (not even the duvet!), so I have a bit of devotee shame about that.

Charlotte NC to get IKEA

And it serves a important lesson if you have a site that meets IKEA’s stringent criteria on size & location - Never stop nagging.

This goes to prove that online petitions don’t work.

Congrats to Charlotte and Ms. DeBoo, from one of the other announced “new kids” on the IKEA block, Southwest Ohio. (And specifically me, another nagging fan.)

Sale: T-minus 7 days

Shop the IKEA Winter Sale early and be the first to save 20-60%

The link has the info.

For people in the west and southwest corner of Ohio I think Detroit/Canton is the way to go. It’s like over twice the size of Pittsburgh and half as far.

And so this post isn’t just more swede-shilling, here’s an article about IKEA founder Ingvar Klampad and his famous ‘thrifty billionaire’ title.