ikea
Watch as a group of vigilantes goes around Ikea in China, using interesting tactics to get people up out of the beds in the store.
This customer experience is blowing up all over social media, or it would be if anyone could get to their cell phones.
Yes, in Japan, even IKEA offers new year’s lucky bags — join us to find out what goodies were in their fukubukuro this year!
Can’t wait for Christmas or feeling a bit grinchy? Either way, Ikea is here to help with this cute, interactive commercial!
Fans of the famously delicious fish salmon in Japan should grab your bibs because the Salmon Festival is rolling into IKEA stores all over the country. On this joyous occasion we may dine on 16 different kinds of salmon dishes.
Of course it wouldn’t be a festival if it weren’t all-you-can-eat as well, so IKEA is making that happen for the attractive price of only 999 yen (US$8.30) for a limited time.
With the mercury reaching 39 degrees celsius in the city of Hangzhou in southern China, residents are trying to keep cool in the most unusual of places. Citizens without residential air conditioning have turned to parking themselves in subways, libraries and other public spaces to escape the summer heat wave.
Swedish furniture store Ikea has made a name for itself worldwide, not only for the size of its stores and decently priced, assemble-it-yourself furnishings, but also for the extremely cheap fare found in their food courts.
Now, they’re really putting the icing on the cake: For a limited time, Ikeas across Japan are having an hour-long all-you-can-eat “Oriental Buffet” for the insane price of only 500 yen (US$4)! But what will only 500 yen get you, you ask? Actually quite the spread, it seems!
IKEA is the go-to place for anyone looking to furnish their home on a budget, while keeping it stylish and homogeneous. And they don’t just cater to humans anymore!
The flat-pack furniture superstore IKEA means so many things to so many people. To students, it’s a great place to buy budget tableware, furniture, and bedding when they are setting out on their own for the first time. To families, it means affordable but nice looking furniture. To the unlucky assembler, it’s infuriating builds when pieces just don’t fit together. And to the rest of us, it means Swedish meatballs and ice cream!
Strangely, at the first IKEA store in Korea, which only opened about two months ago, it means something no one has thought about before: free pencils, and they’re apparently being swiped from the store in their thousands every single day.
Swedish home furnishing company IKEA, as many of you are undoubtedly aware, has a huge presence around the world, and Japan is no exception. Thousands of us enjoy wandering around their gargantuan stores on the weekends, gazing at their pop furniture displays and homeware or wolfing down a serving of their Swedish meatballs at their cafeteria.
Well now, IKEA Japan has news that’s sure to please sweets lovers in particular — for a limited time, they’re be offering an all-you-can-eat “Sweets Buffet”, which includes some delightful-looking Swedish treats that we’re dying to try, for the very reasonable price of 499 yen (US$4.25)! Who wouldn’t be excited about sweet news like that?
It’s a weird quirk of the global economy that sometimes the exact same item can sell for very different prices depending on what country you’re in. For example, in the U.S. Levi’s jeans cost about half what they do in Japan.
As a result, I always wait until I’m taking a trip back to L.A. before I buy a pair of Levi’s. Unfortunately, that’s probably not an option for travelers who want to take back furniture from IKEA, which in Korea sometimes costs 80 percent more than it does in the U.S.
A lot of times, buying furniture is sort of a leap of faith. Sure, that sofa might seem alright when you sit down on it in the showroom for a couple of minutes, but is it really comfy enough for a full afternoon of watching football and drinking beer, plus the two-hour alcohol-induced nap that’ll follow?
Since home furnishings are designed to last for at least a couple of years, you want to spend as much time with them as you can before deciding which model to buy. That’s why Ikea stores encourage customers to sit and lie on the display models for as long as they like, with some shoppers in China taking the offer to make themselves at home as far as they can.
Internationally famous Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, is known for their simplistic designs, affordable yet durable furnishing systems, and let’s not forget, their annual IKEA catalog, the awesome idea book that is packed with a myriad of interior possibilities. The best part? It’s free.
There are plenty of things you could do with an IKEA catalog after you’re done with your sofa shopping. You could recycle it, use it to prop up the uneven leg of your cranky coffee table, or let your pets have it as a new chew toy. I particularly enjoyed using mine as a coaster. A Japanese Twitter user used hers as a backdrop to create interesting snippets of the TIGER & BUNNY gang’s imaginary daily lives. Check them out!
Swedish furniture giant IKEA has never been short of creative ideas, be they for furniture or campaigns to catch our attention. IKEA Singapore previously featured the element of cosplay in their advertising, demonstrating their ability to transform a cosplayer’s cluttered mess into an organized, stylish room with their storage systems.
This time, their Malaysian counterparts have incorporated elements of cosplay into one of their marketing stints, and on top of that, they have encouraged their shoppers to join in. They’ve brought low-budget cosplay to a new light – cosplaying as IKEA products!
After reading this, you’ll have even more reason to love IKEA.
Since May, IKEA and other home goods stores in Singapore have been partnering up with local animal rescue groups to raise awareness about dog adoption. To achieve this goal, IKEA has placed photo cutouts of actual shelter dogs within the sample rooms along with information about the process of adoption. The effort has proved incredibly rewarding so far, with many homeless dogs finding themselves a loving family and a brand new life.
The beds and couches at Ikea are communal nap spots in China. Photographer Kevin Frayer captured the phenomenon for Getty Images.
Eight of the world’s 10 biggest Ikea stores are in China, where the home goods store is expanding to accommodate the growing middle class.
“The stores are designed with extra room displays given the tendency for customers to make a visit an all-day affair,” according to Frayer. “Store management does not discourage shoppers from sleeping on Ikea furniture, even marking them with signs inviting customers to try them out.”
The stores are a refuge in the summer heat.
IKEA is a shopper’s paradise. The colors, the designs, and the price all work together and the impeccably presented showrooms make you want to recreate them in your own home. In Japan, there is the extra bonus of that “European style” that really speaks to some shoppers. IKEA is also well-known for its restaurant, where customers can relax and daydream about the new layout of their rooms while stuffing their face full of meatballs. For a limited time in Tokyo, IKEA has made it possible for you to experience living in a space all decked out in IKEA goods and stuff your face with Swedish meatballs at the same time!
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