Just an observation. For those unfamiliar with Ikea, there are a Swedish multi-national company with home furnisings products that are tasteful, simple, but with assembly required.

As one web-link says... International competitions recognise IKEA for product innovation and ecologically friendly designs. Find out which IKEA products took home awards. ...
http://www.ikea.com/content/main.asp?tab=6&contentframe=/content/whatsnew/award/awards.asp

Also they ARE concerned about the environment...

Some small, but important steps towards a better environment.
http://www.ikea.com/content/about/environment/environment.asp

The ambition to produce affordable products for as many people as possible also brings with it a responsibility that extends far beyond product function and quality alone. A responsibility that starts with the impact on the environment, which our business heavily relies upon. At IKEA, we are at the start of a long and difficult but also inspiring journey to simultaneously create better home environments while adapting our business to help preserve the natural environment.

IKEA took the first step to creating a business less harmful to the environment several decades ago -- without really knowing it! Right from the start, we set out to be as economical as possible in our use of resources. This meant never using more material than was absolutely necessary and concentrating on self assembly furniture packaged to save on costs for storage and transportation.

Today, environmental issues concern and affect everyone and attitudes toward them are changing. Terms such as renewable, degradable and recyclable are becoming a part of everyday language. At IKEA, we're moving towards a way of thinking based on the philosophy that everything we take should be used, reused and recycled...either by ourselves or nature, in such a way that causes the least possible harm to the environment. And just as important: that we stop waste and use the earth's resources more efficiently so that everyone can share in them.

We are in constant pursuit to find new solutions to preserve the environment, even where existing solutions may seem adequate. That includes everything from selecting environmentally sound materials, responsible suppliers and product manufacturers to recycling IKEA Catalogues. Call it a protest against the conventional, if you will, with a desire to continually improve and develop. Our convention is that nothing is impossible. We believe the "impossible" just takes a bit longer to accomplish.

Our ambition is to think out each step before we take them with great respect towards the environment. It is not enough to be friendly to the environment, we must adapt to it. IKEA, you and people everywhere must search for new and economical uses of our precious environmental resources to adapt ourselves to the forests, lakes, air and mountains.

Not the other way around.

As you can see by the San Francisco Chronicle account to be posted below, Ikea just opened a store in the Bay Area, and was overwhelmed.

This is a good thing.

Diane

Corparate web-site...
http://www.ikea.com/

U.S. Web-site...
http://www.ikea-usa.com/content/

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Answers

Shoppers Swarm to Strip Shelves At
Emeryville's New Ikea Store
More hiring is planned to meet exceptional demand

Carol Emert, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, April 21, 2000
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/04/21/BU64522.DTL

[Fair Use: For Educational/Research Purposes Only]

The opening of Emeryville's Ikea furniture superstore surpassed all projections and set a record for the company's North American division, drawing 145,000 people in its first eight days of business.

Sales are running about twice what had been forecast, and many items are out of stock, said store manager Michael O'Rourke.

He declined to release specific sales numbers, but said Emeryville's grand-opening sales exceeded those of the Chicago Ikea, which is 40 percent bigger.

``The thing that amazes us is the number of people coming during the week,'' O'Rourke said.

``On Monday, 400 people were in line when I opened the door at 9:45 a.m. Tuesday it was 250, and Wednesday a little over 100. The parking lot is usually full in the first hour,'' he said. On April 12, the store's opening day, a record 21,769 turned out. That's triple Emeryville's population.

As expected, the opening of the mammoth blue-and- yellow store turned Emeryville into a parking lot, clogging surrounding roadways.

O'Rourke expects more heavy traffic this weekend.

About 100 sales associates were flown in from as far away as Ikea's Chicago and Houston stores to help handle the crowds. O'Rourke said he will try to hire 100 more locals to staff the store.

``We've just been overwhelmed,'' O'Rourke said. ``We opened with an extremely high level of inventory, which we thought would last for five weeks, and we went through it in 1 1/2 weeks.''

Eight to 10 containers are being unloaded in the store each night, he said.

Ikea, based in Sweden, is negotiating for a second Bay Area site in the South Bay.

E-mail Carol Emert at cemert@sfgate.com.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000