Bigger and better

To create a better everyday life for the many people.

To offer a wide range of well designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.

The IKEA brand is the sum total of the emotional and rational values that consumers associate with the IKEA tradesmark and the reputation of our company.

The IKEA vision

The Many

At four thirty on the third of November an ambulance turns off its sirens and stops in the middle of an intersection. It hasn't reached its destination yet, but cannot progress any further. The intersection between the Princes Highway and Canal Road is being manned by traffic police because of the extreme number of vehicles that are trying to pass on this particular day. Paramedics climb out of the ambulance, their foreheads lined with concern, and form a huddle with the police, gesturing fiercely. Drivers press their chests against seat-belts, stretching forward to witness the solution. Their curiosity will be met by disappointment - with cars at gridlock for kilometres on both roads there is nothing to be done.

It is understandable perhaps that an ambulance might not make it to a patient during a mass exodus from a city, perhaps in the case of a hurricane. It is expected that ambulances will have trouble navigating their way to remote bush locations or even to the centre of a major musical festival. But it would be more than a little irritating, I imagine, to learn that a family member or friend did not receive emergency treatment because of the opening of a new IKEA.

Affordable, practical, cute Swedish furniture drives Sydney-siders wild. Or so we can deduce from the fact that despite IKEA's negotiations with the Roads and Maritime Service prior to its Tempe store opening - organising shuttle buses that will run every 15-20 minutes from local stations to the store for the full first fortnight of its business - local councils predicted severe traffic disruptions from the store's November second opening right up until Christmas. The intensity of planning surrounding the Tempe opening mimics previous IKEA openings Australia-wide. Since its arrival in 1975, IKEA has made a gradual impact, city by city, converting Aussie-types to the Swedish way. In 2011, the second link provided by google in a search for 'Australian Furniture' is the IKEA Australia website.

The drive is an infuriating crawl through humid drizzle. Bus windows are made opaque by condensation as passengers crammed together breathe as one. 'The Many' are on a mass pilgrimage, each with the same vision in mind. They anticipate change. A bigger, better more exciting version of IKEA - a bigger, better more exciting version of their lives.

The Rational and The Emotional.

The Many have landed. The giant store is a cube of royal blue, a beacon against the greys and browns of Tempe. Its insides are every colour imaginable. Walking into the store The Many are greeted with balloons. Abba is playing over the speaker system, signs advertise the Swedish meatballs being sold en masse.

Some statistics on IKEA Tempe. The store is the size of twenty soccer fields and features 60 room settings. It houses a 12,860 square metre warehouse and 44 checkouts. There is onsite parking for 1,680 cars and a restaurant to seat 760 diners. The Tempe store is 50% larger than its sister at Rhodes and has earned the credit of being the largest IKEA in the southern hemisphere. A full circuit of the store is 2.5km, The Many begin their voyage.

A few metres into the store the hype slips away. Apart from the unusual crowds this could be any IKEA store worldwide. The experience of walking through IKEA is somewhat like stepping into an alternative universe. A place where time is of no importance. Where one drifts mindlessly along a pre designated path in confidence that what they will discover will be worth the confusion, the dizziness, and the shopper's fatigue.

The store is lined with room displays so complete that one might be stepping into a real house. A consequent delight ensues, the freedom of having one's way in a stranger's home – opening their cupboards, sitting in their chairs, lying on their beds and flicking through the books on their shelves. Each room is perfect in its own right, highly considered and carefully constructed. The elaborateness of it all induces a sort of delirium in its visitors. The eyes of The Many light up, thoughts of the world outside (which from the warmth of this oversized IKEA cocoon seems very, very far away) have dissolved, fingers clutch lists - scribbling down the names of products, voices whisper 'I want this room'.

Walking through IKEA is a personal experience and a marketing manipulation. The Many consider their own most personal needs, their own life struggles and even their own aspirations whilst they wander through a maze designed rationally, honed over the years to increase sales.

IKEA is an international brand, and the experience of visiting a store is globally consistent. The influence of Sweden is prevalent. Mikhael Ohlsson, who took over as chief executive of the IKEA group in September 2009 links IKEA's simplicity and hatred of waste to its origins in Smaland, a poor region of souther Sweden. Ohlsson describes the residents of Smaland as 'stubborn, cost-conscious and ingenious at making a living with very little.' According to IKEA's mission statement, 'The key IKEA messages all have their roots in the Swedish origin of IKEA: Swedish furniture is light and fresh yet unpretentious. The warm, welcoming Swedish style has become a model of simplicity, practicality, and informality that is now world renown'.

This is the rational and emotional world that has been devised for The Many and they drift through it slowly, pushing against each-other in excitement, stopping to smile at familiar friends. Who are the friends they meet along the way? How about BILLY the bookcase, familiar to all IKEA fans. Over 41 million BILLYs have been sold since its introduction in 1979. According to IKEA, BILLY is their roommate, their companion, their comrade against the challenges of life. To celebrate BILLY's 30th birthday in 2009, IKEA UK invited customers to submit pictures of their own BILLYs to a website. The images were then used to create a film advertisement that was viewed online more than 250,000 times. The marketing team behind BILLY's birthday campaign describe it as proof that 'the relationship between IKEA and the customers is based on teamwork'.

2km later the devotion of The Many is beginning to waver. Children who have been crying for the bathroom for 800 metres are ready to burst. Feet are beginning to ache and the repetition of primary colours like some sort of ever-spinning pinwheel is beginning to cause migraines. By the time innumerable cardboard boxes have been loaded onto trolleys and wheeled to cars, The Many wonder if they have the energy to brave the roads at all. It's beginning to grow dark, hours have disappeared, the IKEA-hang-over is an epidemic.

The Reputation of Our Company.

IKEA's devotees treat it like a religion. Lisa Aitkin and Olly Taylor of Host Advertising Agency, who were responsible for converting Australians to the brand describe the experience as a kid of revelation. 'We became total devotees. We loved the simple logic and concrete rationality that sits behind everything they do. How they flat pack everything so they can get the maximum amount of product per cubic metre and avoid 'shipping air' around the world. How they set their designers seemingly impossible challenged like 'create a full bedroom suite to cost no more than the monthly salary of the average family in Poland, the country with the lowest PCI in the EU'. How because they use robots to load their lorries, and robots don't need to see, IKEA minimizes costs by not lighting their huge distribution hubs. Being this buttoned down is essential when you are publishing a catalogue whose print run alone is 190 million. That's bigger than the bible.' And this kind of adoration is not limited to those employed by the furniture giant. Germans are IKEA's best customers (15% of all IKEA sales are German) and in 2009 a Hamburg theatre company staged an opera about IKEA, 'Wunder von Schweden' ('Miracle from Sweden'), a biography of the 'furniture messiah' set to Swedish folk tunes.

Although shopping in IKEA can be inefficient, and for many outright infuriating, The Many keep coming. Why? Because as well as being stylish and fun, IKEA products are inconceivably cheap. IKEA's 1943 goal, 'to allow people with limited means to furnish their houses like rich people,' has been met, and continues to be met year after year.

The Sydney-siders sitting in their living rooms at midnight on November second, armed with allen keys and surrounded by ripped cardboard, are not alone. There are others making the same trip all over the world. Fumbling with screws, sweating as they lift sofas through doors, constructing a perfect Swedish life of their own. IKEA marketers claim that in 2010 one in three new europeans was conceived on an IKEA bed. Australians might not match Europeans when it comes to IKEA mania, but as couples fall asleep on their brand new FJELLSEs, it doesn't seem far off.