Ikea - You've gone too far!

Too soon?

Like most people, I have a bit of a love-hate relationship to Ikea and their furniture. On the positive side the design is usually relatively nice with reasonable prices but the assembly of the stuff usually end up with a lot of cursing and questionable results. In recent times we have started to go around this problem by paying some of the Ikea peons to assemble the stuff for us even if it cost a little extra.

Those not from Sweden might not know it, but Ikea is founded in an area in Sweden which is famous for the people there being extremely stingy. The founder of Ikea, Ingvar Kamprad, is notorious for being stingy even by the standard set by the local population (he's also a former nazi in case you didn't know). So Ikea is also famous for their lower than industry norm salaries, but for some reason a lot of people seem to want to work there (at least in Sweden).

But there has been one thing with Ikea that has had my unconditional love since they established themselves here in Japan; the Swedish food section. I've been to Ikea many times just to buy some of the Swedish food, brands and stuff that I could not get anywhere except at Ikea here in Japan. However, now the stinginess of Ikea has struck again and a decision seems to have been made to phase out all non-Ikea products and replace them with generic dull own made products. The new products have exciting names such as "Bread", "Drink" and "Chocolate" and are packed in exciting one coloured packages. To add insult to injury, they are also quite expensively priced.

I used to be able to go there and get some nostalgic Swedish food of brands which I grew up with and loved, but it's basically all gone now, exchanged with stuff that makes it look like a North Korean supermarket. For expat Swede's it's a huge betrayal and I'm not sure I will able to forgive Ikea for this stupid move in making more buck out of their food section...