Free Republic

IKEA’s Polish Catalogue Introduces “Ian and Steve” as a Model of the New Family By Hilary White December 1, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – An ad campaign in the latest catalogue by the Swedish furniture giant, IKEA, purporting to depict “modern” life, includes twelve portraits of “families” that promote a “new model of living together.” Among these is the domestic arrangement of “Ian” and “Steve,” under the slogan, “the family is ... two sister souls.” “Ian and Steve,” the ad says, have no intention of having children, but enjoy their “command centre” IKEA kitchen and herb garden. The catalogue, says a pro-family...

Despite their billions, Sweden’s wealthiest individuals have shown that not even they can withstand the effects of the financial crisis coupled with a dismal year on the stock market. A recent ranking by the Veckans Affärer business magazine reveals that the number of Swedish billionaires has been cut by nearly 30 percent in the last year, leaving only 98 individuals who are rich enough to measure their wealth in ten figures. Collective losses for the richest of Sweden’s rich amount to a staggering 200 billion kronor ($24.7 billion), a roughly 20 percent drop. But not to worry, those who top...

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

Swedish furniture maker Ikea celebrated the opening of its first factory in the United States on Wednesday. Swedwood, a subsidiary of home furnishings giant, has 40 plants worldwide. The $281 million plant in Danville, Virginia will employ 300 people by the end of 2009, said Swedwood North America president Bengt Danielsson. Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine was at Wednesday's ceremony to hail the economic boost to the ailing region along the North Carolina border, formerly a stronghold for the tobacco industry. Swedwood received $12 million in incentives from in state and local authorities, as well as the Virginia Tobacco Commission...

Ikea walking all over us, say angry Danes Imperialism claim as Swedes give their mats Danish names. POWER games between Scandinavian neighbours are nothing new – generations of monarchs fought bitter battles over land for the best part of a millennium. But now Sweden and Denmark are involved in a new spat – over the unlikely matter of floor coverings. And Sweden's omnipresent homeware retailer, Ikea, is at the heart of the row.

Ikea is putting on sale flat-pack homes, with their own plot of land, at the furniture giant's store in Gateshead, Tyne & Wear (UK) today. The timber-framed homes will be targeted at first-time buyers struggling to get on the property ladder. The concept was pioneered in Sweden in the 1990s and has grown in popularity with more than 1,000 of the houses springing up each year across Scandinavia. Known as BoKlok, the flats and houses will be eco-friendly, using renewable materials in the construction and featuring solar panels and geothermal equipment incorporated in the design. All the properties will be...

No longer content to offer consumers Swedish meatballs and self-assembly shelves, Ikea in Norway is now offering weary shoppers the chance to sleep over in one of its Oslo showrooms free of charge. From July 23 to July 27, the public will be able to spend the night in special rooms set up in the store, with a choice of bridal suite, complete with hanging chandelier and a round bed, or a luxury suite that includes breakfast in bed. Others can share a bunk in the dormitory, while parents and children can join in the fun in one of Ikea's...

Having succeeded in filling homes around the world with affordable Swedish design, furniture giant Ikea has taken the logical next step: making the homes themselves. Ikea has built more than 3,500 apartments and houses across the Nordic region and is now planning its first UK developments. In the late 1990s Ikea teamed up with Swedish construction company Skanska to develop BoKlok (which means Live Smart in Swedish). The concept aims to provide stylish but inexpensive new homes for low and middle income families, and is said to be popular with Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea’s notoriously thrifty billionaire founder. BoKlok’s marketing manager...

Advertisers in the U.S. are starting to "reach out" to Muslims and "focusing on ways to use the cultural aspects of the Muslim religion to help sell their products," according to The New York Times: Companies in the Detroit area, where there is a dense population of Muslims, are leading the change. A McDonald’s there serves halal Chicken McNuggets; Walgreens has Arabic signs in its aisles. And now, Ikea, which recently opened a store in the suburb of Canton, Mich., that has had trouble attracting as many Muslim customers as it had hoped, has been touring local homes and talking...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Sweden's IKEA will charge U.S. customers five cents for disposable plastic shopping bags in what the international furniture giant said on Wednesday was a first step to ending their use altogether. IKEA said the decision to stop giving away free bags to customers aimed to reduce the estimated 100 billion bags thrown away by all U.S. consumers each year. IKEA is believed to be first retailer in the United States to undertake such a program, according to National Retail Federation spokesman Scott Krugman.

NOTICE: YOU'LL HAVE TO: 1. CLICK THE LINK TO THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ABOVE (IN RED)OR IN MY POST BELOW, THEREAFTER 2. CLICK THE MONITORS IN ORDER TO DISPLAY THE CLIPS The Article: "The humour of IKEA A Norwegian IKEA ad is entertaining Scandinavians on Bubblare.se at the moment. It certainly casts new light on the oft-quoted Swedish adage that ‘we’re all farmers at heart’. Enjoy: (SEE MY POST BELOW OR CLICK THE LINK IN RED ABOVE) That prompted us to have a rummage for more humour from the furniture makers of Älmhult. This one, produced for the German market last...

The article, from one of the world's leading newspapers, touches on what a blessing saying "hasta la vista" to socialism really can be - not to mention future prospects! Ask the people who live in the hottest city of Europe - and they don't speak "cockney" or french with a Paris accent. The fall of Communism in Russia and China in combination with the orientation towards pro-capitalism of Scandinavia has already lead to a explosion of trade between the world's 14th biggest economy, Russia, the world's 4th biggest economy, China and the 8th biggest one, the Scandinavian countries (Source: IMF...

Introducing...Ingvar Kamprad Introducing...is The Local's weekly column giving the lowdown on a top Swedish celebrity. This week Paul O'Mahony looks at the man who got rich by selling flat-pack furniture to the world - Ingvar Kamprad Who is he and why is he famous? Ingvar Kamprad is famous for being the founder of flat-pack furnishing giant IKEA. His cheap chairs and tables have made him one of the wealthiest people in the world. So he's the one responsible for the Klippan-sized headache I got while assembling the Magiker that I ended up throwing in the Knodd? Yes, the very man....

GENEVA (Reuters) - IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, ranked 4th richest man in the world, drives a 15-year-old car and always flies economy class, in part to inspire his 90,000 employees worldwide to see the virtue of frugality. The billionaire Swede, who turns 80 on March 30, explained his legendary habits during a rare television interview in Switzerland, his adoptive home for nearly 30 years. His fortune was recently estimated at $28 billion by Forbes magazine -- trailing only Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, U.S. investor Warren Buffett and Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim. "People say I am cheap and I don't mind...

Furniture giant IKEA lures customers with homey interior landscapes and cheap warm meals. But more and more people are starting to use the stores as an ersatz for social services and babysitting. Every day, at 8.50 am, Bodo Scheel gets into his Nissan car, his stomach rumbling with hunger, and drives 11.3 kilometers down the A7 highway near Hamburg. He turns off at junction 23 to reach his destination: the Ikea furniture store. The 67-year-old pensioner has been coming to the restaurant in Ikea for breakfast for years now. The deal is unbeatable: For €1.50 he gets two bread rolls,...

Sony (6758.T) has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan “Ten years of passion.” Some Catholics were outraged by the adverts, which ran in newspapers and magazines to celebrate the product’s tenth anniversary. “This time they’ve gone too far,” said Antonio Sciortino, editor of Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), a mass-circulation Catholic weekly. “If this had concerned Islam there would have been a really strong reaction,” Sciortino was quoted as saying in the Corriere della Sera newspaper. In the Bible, Jesus was forced to wear...

Camped outside the blue-and-yellow store for 15 days before its opening, Chris Jones, a recent college graduate from a small town outside Atlanta, was perhaps more excited than any other customer about Bolingbrook's new Ikea. Jones, 22, flew into town on a one-way ticket after a friend told him about the store's giveaways to its first customers. Awarded a $3,000 gift certificate the moment the doors opened to the public Wednesday, his investment paid off, he said. Jones didn't buy anything Wednesday morning, but he said bonding with Ikea devotees and the experience of camping out for more than two...

BEIJING - China has seen a rapid development of its furniture industry in recent years, attracting the attention of many big-name world furniture manufacturers. The furniture industry has entered a fast-growth stage, and a complete industrial chain now exists for the sector, in keeping with international trends. It now produces various types of products, which can satisfy domestic needs as well as international customers. Industry experts expect a second high-speed development stage in the coming 5-10 years, as the furniture industry worldwide readjusts the distribution of its production. In the second stage of high-speed development, China's furniture industry will focus...

PRWEB) August 22, 2005 -- IKEA's new Edmonton branch contacted TheHijabShop.com to design and produce a 'hijab' – a Muslim headscarf - that would fit in with their current uniform. When IKEA first approached TheHijabShop.com, their excited team was impressed that an internationally-acclaimed company like IKEA was making so much effort to accommodate Muslims in its workforce. The challenge for the team was to create a hijab that had the IKEA branding; that was easy to put on without the need for pins - so avoiding any health and safety hazards; and that was something employees would feel comfortable wearing...

There has always been bigotry, and sadly there always will be bigotry. Call it the ugly side of human nature, or the worst angels of our race, but some of us will always be consumed with hatred and intolerance for those who are different. Bigotry is a mental disorder if you ask me, a form of delusion where one person can not accept that someone else looks, talks, dresses, or prays differently than they do. It is truly pathetic to watch or listen to a bigot spewing their rank stupidity and generally making a public nuisances of themselves. Perhaps the...

OSLO, Norway (Reuters) - Swedish home furnishings giant IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing only men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, Norway's prime minister says. IKEA, which has more than 200 stores in 32 nations, fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds. Its manuals show only men or cartoon figures whose sex is unclear. "This isn't good enough," Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was quoted Thursday as telling the daily Verdens Gang. "It's important to promote attitudes for sexual equality, not least in Muslim nations." "They should change this,"...

PM blasts IKEAPrime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik is astonished by Swedish furniture giant IKEA's view of women and wants the company to start depicting women building furniture in their assembly instructions.IKEA has about 2,000 products that need diagrammed instructions to assemble, and not one of these sheets shows a woman tackling the problem of putting Swedish flat-packed furniture together.Bondevik calls IKEA's stance "untenable", and was unimpressed by the explanation offered."We have over 200 warehouses around the world and have to take cultural considerations into account. In Muslim countries there is a problem using women in instructions," IKEA's information chief Camilla...

20 hurt as frenzied mob fights over £49 sofas on opening night Britain's biggest Ikea store opened at midnight yesterday — but closed just 40 minutes later as 6,000 frenzied shoppers stampeded for bargains, leaving 20 in need of hospital treatment. One woman was said to have been threatened by a man with a mallet, and another waiting in the checkout queue was "mugged" for her cut-price sofa. Security guards were reported to have fled the scene. Police were called and a fleet of nine ambulances ferried people to hospital with heat exhaustion and crush injuries. A huge crowd had...

STAMPEDE!! Injuries at IKEA opening By MICHAEL MCDONOUGH - Associated Press LONDON (AP) — A man was stabbed and five other people were taken to hospital after thousands of customers caused a stampede at the midnight opening of a new IKEA furniture store in north London, British authorities said Thursday. The Swedish retailer expressed regret at the incident. The stabbing victim, a man in his 20s, was attacked at around 1:30 a.m. near the IKEA store, a spokeswoman for London’s Metropolitan Police said, adding that his condition did not appear life-threatening. The new IKEA warehouse in the Edmonton district had...

A stampede at a branch of the furniture and lifestyle superstore Ikea in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, ended with three people being crushed to death yesterday. Three men were trampled in the rush to claim vouchers at the opening of the first of a new style of Ikea showroom; 16 shoppers were injured. Medics revived some 20 more who had fainted. The rush was triggered by an offer for the first 50 shoppers to receive $150 (£84) in vouchers. An Ikea statement said more than 20,000 people showed up. Hospital officials said a Pakistani and a Saudi died. The nationality of...

Three men were trampled to death in a rush to claim vouchers at the first IKEA furniture showroom in Saudi Arabia today, hospital officials said. Sixteen shoppers were injured at the Sweden-based furniture store's showroom in Jeddah. Medics revived some 20 customers who had fainted in the crush. The stampede was triggered by an offer for the first 50 shoppers to received $US150 ($213) vouchers. An official at Ikea's Saudi agent said more than 70,000 people showed up at Jeddah. Hospital officials said two dead were a Pakistani and a Saudi national. Ikea is known for simple, reasonably priced products....

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - The founder of Swedish furniture giant Ikea isn't hurting for money, but the company he founded denied on Monday a report that he surpassed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as the world's wealthiest man. In an article to be released this week, Swedish news weekly Veckans Affaerer said Ingvar Kamprad, 77, the founder of Ikea, had surpassed Microsoft's Gates and Buffett as the world's wealthiest person. The falling exchange rate between the Swedish krona and the U.S. dollar, the magazine said, had caused Kamprad's personal fortune to rise to an estimated $52.5 billion. Ikea said that wasn't...

<p>STOCKHOLM, (Reuters) - Ingvar Kamprad, the Swede who founded furniture retail chain IKEA, has overtaken Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world's richest man, Swedish TV news reported on Sunday.</p> <p>Citing next week's edition of the Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer, public service SVT2 television said Kamprad, 77, has a personal fortune of 400 billion crowns ($53 billion).</p>

Through UNICEF, IKEA Supports Children’s Right to Play NEW YORK, 12 March 2004 – UNICEF today thanked IKEA for a gift of Euros 666,566 (approximately US $829,000) that will sponsor UNICEF programmes in Angola and Uganda supporting “Children’s Right to Play.” In July 2003 IKEA introduced a Teddy Bear called “Brum” in its stores world-wide. Two Euros from the sale of each bear is donated to the UNICEF program. IKEA expected to raise a total of Euros 400,000 but sales have far exceeded expectations, resulting in a larger gift to UNICEF. The sales of Brum in support of UNICEF...