I am genuinely upset about this. I have such fond memories of thumbing through endlessly as a teenager and dreaming of having my own spaces that were so wonderfully busy and eclectic. My wife and I were just at IKEA last week picking up a new bed for our growing toddler, I glanced at the catalogs as we passed and decided against picking one up. I hope I can still get my hands on a couple old copies to keep on my bookshelf.
Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history.
GP has fond memories of a commercial brand, for a company, that should be priceless. He even intend to keep a catalog on his bookshelf, his kid will grow with an IKEA ad, for a company, that should be priceless.
Except that there is no such thing as "priceless" for a company. And they probably put a price tag on that, and decided that the "childhood memories" value is not worth the costs.
What you describe might well be a good reason for them to reprint a limited run of - maybe an older version - of the catalogue and sell them as mementos or put scanned versions online. E.g. old Argos catalogs are available here [1].
My kids (8 + 6) have poured through argos catalogues their whole lives thinking about toys. Rather than using that as a springboard into the app (quick QR code) where you can then click and deliver with your sainsburys order, Argos seems to be in a managed decline, getting rid of everything that differentiates it from competitors.
Argos sales have been stable at around 4bn gbp a year in recent years as far as I can tell, but finally reported substantial growth after lockdown shifted most of their sales online. I'm not convinced holding on to their catalog as long as they did has done them any favours.
The growth I referred to was explicitly Argos, which has seen consistent growth through all of 2020, with Nov/Dec being 8% up year over year.
8% isn't huge, but it contributed to the majority of Sainsbury's overall growth in the period, and it's a massive turnaround for Argos given it's revenues have basically stayed about the same level for a decade.
Online sales as a percentage of all retail sales in the UK have been steadily increasing by about 2pp per year for the last decade until 2019 [0]
In 2020 this increased from 19% to 28%, from £76b to £99b [1]
For Argos sales to only be up 8% in 2020, or £320m, isn't good, it took just 1.3% of the extra online sales. Remember also that Argos (on the whole) remained open for collection during the lockdowns inside of Sainsburys.
> Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history.
He. I had a bout where I spent waaaaay too much time and effort hunting down the precise same variant of the Risk board game that I had as a kid, only to not play it once since I got it. The old edition I looked for had star-shaped playthings instead of the symbolic cannons etc that are used now.
Now I just have to find Drakborgen (re-release of the 1985 edition kickstarter here, apparently :) : [0]) and Battle cars [1].
I went and bought one of these allen keys to disassemble a well worn piece of Ikea furniture, only to unzip the back of the chair during disassembly, to find the allen wrench.
Spent a good half hour looking for the manual online, only to remember Ikea manuals are all pictures. I found the manual and was reminded of this. About to give up, I took a risk, and thankfully bought the right sized key. Allen wrenches are made in both Imperial and Metric scales; Ikea, being Swedish, meant correctly picking metric.
I later looked through the manual, and on the 2nd to last page, it documented the correct key size.
>It is possible to take a soft covered Velo-bound book, remove the old binding and cover, and re-bind it with a hard cover, which may be pre-embossed for more a more impressive appearance. This rapid up-grade was the cause of the short-lived motto "Soft to hard in 30 seconds!" That was first done when the firm was located in Sunnyvale, California.
Seriously. Reminds me of those local news segments of old restaurants closing down and everyone being interviewed are sad and are reminiscing about when they used to go to it "as a kid".
All my local furniture shops, including Ikea, have horrible, horrible experience. And it's the same for other shops. It's practically impossible to know all of the following:
* is everything in the picture included
* what are all the possible exterior dimensions of the product
* what are the specifications of the products down to all the specifications which make you choose one product over another
The saddest part is, lately it's been impossible to find this data on the manufacturers website as well. Basic things like how many nits does the TV have, how big does the front panel need to be for the dishwasher etc.
I found for a lot of websites that Google image search works a lot better and quicker to find what you are looking for then the site's own search page.
Not for IKEA, they cancel products all the time. Discovering an IKEA product you really want and then discovering that it's not available anymore is a really shitty feeling.
Slightly shitty feeling? Anyway, the popularity of IKEA makes it that you can search second hand websites by the name of the furniture and have a decent chance of finding it. Would be surprised though if IKEA has a higher turnover of furniture models than other shops because selling furniture depends on creating & following trends & fashions and that’s the same for any brand (although some brands have their ‘classics’ that they keep selling for a long long time, like IKEA does).
Very little furniture is designed to be disassembled for transport though. But you’re right in the sense that the flatpack format is pretty practical for transport and you only get that when you buy new. Second hand is always a bit more complicated for the human, even if better for the planet.
IKEA's website is awful. Just as an example, here's something that was happening for months, before they fixed it late last year:
When you login, there are two types of accounts you can log into. Ikea and Ikea Family. These are shown as tabs, and the tab labels are faint. The login screen defaulted to the Ikea Family, so my individual login never worked, again because the labeling wasn't clear.
It wasn't until I was ready to reset my pw that I carefully looked at every screen element and noticed the tabs.
That was certainly the bet about a decade or two ago in many industries.
Now, over the past 5 years or so we're seeing online tech magazines move into print[0], record labels racing to get back up to speed for vinyl printing[1], and "lo-fi" looks and sounds and devices taking up a larger and larger space in pop culture[2].
If anything, I get the sense that the younger generations are seeing the value in attention and peace, and are moving in directions that afford them more of that—or at least control over that in their own lives and thoughts.
The general attitude, at least as far as I've discerned from my own observations, has been that "everything has it's optimal place" rather than adopting one tech to rule them all.
[2] I don't have a nice summary for this one. It's just everywhere I look.
As with most things, I gather humanity is continually optimizing for itself. And what that looks like is what most gamblers usually get wrong because our foresight is often just that limited—especially when the result is going back to something most people thought we were done with. We are just a bunch of monkeys acting strangely, after all.
I saw this a little ago and even though it's true that old ways have value, even in smartphone AR/VR era, I also have a feel that this revival was more or less a dead cat bounce and not something that will grow much more. Kids today live in the era of real time video + AR filters.. there's a chance that this represent their magic / zeitgeist.
Kids grow up. The instant gratification hit gives way over time as we gain exposure to the world, and to mastery.
Without a doubt real-time video sharing and VR/AR will colour our world and help shape the future. They already have.
But that's not the point I was making. It's that, without certain knowledge of the future many people are willing to generalize and write off "old technology" in a fleeting way and without reflection.
Upon further reflection (using the music industry as an example), something like a vinyl music record was optimized for human attention and appreciation of a certain type of artwork. The industry, beginning in the 80's through the early 2000's, figured people would only care for convenience, and "good-enough" quality.
The current market forces have shown them to be wrong in their assumption that was the sum of what made music listening and purchases worthwhile. In reality, the experience from end-to-end really shaped the value of it.
From the sensual aspects of browsing a record store—smells, feeling, sociability, exposure to new art—to taking the physical object home, opening it, and performing the ritual of setting it on the turntable and tuning a system to play it back to your pleasure.
A lot of that was lost in the novelty of being able to carry your favourite songs everywhere in your pocket. The industry adapted, began to shut down old production facilities and retire old machinery.
When the novelty wore off and people were seeking more of an experience and less commodity the industry was not prepared for it.
It's getting there now. And I think we've ended up with what's approaching the best of all possible worlds: we've got convenience when we want it, and a selection of encompassing experiences for those who appreciate them.
The big mistake was the same big mistake humanity will make over and over again as it optimizes for itself: hubris. Illustrated by: "We've learned something new and incredible! Well now we know everything."
We never do, of course. But regardless, barring some forced eternal austerity or all-consuming catastrophe, humanity continues to optimize for itself always narrowing on on the mean good (often exercising a range of potential outcomes along the way from inconsequential to horrendous).
Relating to the larger subject at hand: paper is optimal in so many ways and the environmental aspects become only technical problems to be solved, not philosophical ones about whether or not it's worth it. Being so ready to erase something like that and force humanity onto tablet computers or some other novel technology is such a fine illustration of hubris it's almost trite.
> Kids grow up. The instant gratification hit gives way over time as we gain exposure to the world, and to mastery.
Yes, I meant this in a generation-period sense. For 10-20 years AR/VR will be the fad that this kid will run for until they grow up. But it may also be strong enough to shift the culture long term.
I feel the same about 'old' not being lesser than new. Many spoke about how strange this feeling is. How limited 8bit games were full of wonders, weird illustrations. Yes the feeling of browsing small or big stores for items (music, books or else).. it's all part of our lives and 24/7 digital nomad with all of spotify.. doesn't compensate for this somehow.
I spend a lot of time reading about old tech. Sometimes I'm astonished but the ingenuosity or beauty (log slider rules are my favorite computing device now). I powered an old tape drive and the mechanics and sound felt special.. and more fun than the latest tech that is so invisible to our sense. I smile watching how tape decks were made, trivial tech (bits of metal, holes and springs) yet it's not less complex than a program.
I think the best we can really do is look at each successive generation's cultural adoption. Besides something like vinyl, there are many phenomena that persist in spite of being "outdated". I mean, a car will get us somewhere faster, but people still ride horses for other reasons—and for reasons that a car will never be able to even emulate.
The article on vinyl production points at a market much larger than a "hipster niche"—it's the very source of the production issues they faced: the resurgent market was much larger than any company in the industry predicted.
It's not about "retro", it's about ephemera and ritual and appreciation.
Certainly, dedicated fans of music exist in all aspects of human culture and not just western ...hipsterdom.
Oh, that actually sounds like a cool idea for an AR app.
Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head.
And if IKEA were to do it, they can just add shopping feature so the customer could purchase the furniture after trying it out inside their own room. That totally sounds like a killer app!
I wonder if there's anything like that already on the market.
> Imagine using AR to add furnitures to your current room with furniture from a virtual catalogue. That way, you can see how your room would look like instead of imagining it inside your head.
By in-discoverability you mean interacting with furniture through phones ? Could be. The old catalog was a powerful dream machine though.. now in terms of sales it might be much. Time will tell.
I'm not anywhere near upset but I loved going through IKEA and Sony catalogs in the 90s. It was aspirational since the nearest IKEA was two countries away and represented something modern and more progressive than the furniture we could buy. Most of the Sony catalog was equipment I didn't need or could afford, except Walkmans or various headphones.
Edit: Just placed an order for the specific catalog year I have so many memories of reading. One of my sillier purchases, but it feels like a piece of personal history.