Everyone seemed to agree – be it smoked, pickled or served in a creamy sauce – the herring was very good. It wasn’t a typical buffet, but this wasn’t a typical furniture store: Most furniture stores don’t have a cafeteria that serves herring.
On Wednesday, a week before the scheduled public opening of the newest U.S. Ikea retail store in Portland, the 64-year-old Swedish housewares giant threw open its doors to local media to provide a first look to readers and listeners.
For those who’ve never been, Ikea is a producer of anything stylish that can be sold at an inexpensive price. Its colossal stores, which dwarf the average Costco or even Walmart, offer childcare, kitchenware, live plants, storage “solutions” and lingonberry jam. Anything people might think they would need to furnish a house, and many things they might not know they need, are here under one roof. For any college student stocking a first apartment this is a pretty attractive opportunity. The store offers an entire kitchen set “startbox” with plastic storage containers, pots, pans, utensils, dishes and cups for $89.99.
What sets the store apart from most American retail giants is the emphasis on style-conscious design and in-house production: Everything on sale at Ikea comes from the store’s designers, is produced by the company and displayed beautifully in the stores’ showrooms. In the same way that Apple, Inc. sells electronics – designing software to run on fashionable devices sold through a masterful retail experience – Ikea runs a furniture store.
Shopping at Ikea is not unlike visiting a Disney theme park. On the second floor, a snaking path leads shoppers through a maze-like showroom with full sized dioramas of homes and assembled pieces of furniture to test. Downstairs, shoppers pick up smaller accessories in the “marketplace” and then spill into a massive warehouse to pick up pieces of furniture they’ve been lusting after since the showroom. Most of the furniture comes flat-packed (a technique which saves space, shipping costs and money) so customers’ boxes only contain parts, nearly everything gets assembled at home with a screwdriver or Allen wrench.
Portland’s store is large and somewhat different from pre-existing stores in San Francisco and Seattle. The store is smaller than the latter and also split into two floors, but the cafe is large with 250 seats and, not surprisingly, serves delicious looking food at obscenely low prices. A plate full of eggs, bacon and potatoes costs 99 cents.
The Cascade Station location, just outside the Portland Airport presents the biggest challenge. The store is very close to a MAX light rail station, and is offering customers a $10 home delivery credit if they ride public transportation, but most will probably opt to drive rather than pay for delivery. A trip there at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday was still fraught with traffic and that situation will only get worse when thousands of Portland and Vancouver, Wash. residents start streaming in to shop.
For fanatics looking to be first in the door Wednesday morning, festivities are set to kick off at 8:30 a.m., but customers will be allowed to start camping out on Monday. The store is giving away chairs to the first 100 adults through the door, handing out 2,500 random prize envelopes and passing a $10 gift card to visitors with July 25 as a birthday.