Have you
ever been to Ikea before? I haven’t (at least, not until this weekend). Those
stores are enormous and terrifying for introverts like me – although still fun.
I especially enjoyed all the subtle sales tools they used.
For anyone
who hasn't been to Ikea before, the bulk of the store is set up as a huge
showroom. A path winds through a maze of beautiful sample kitchens, living
rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms. Every item and piece of furniture
in these rooms has a price tag accompanied by information on where to find the
product in the “shopping” part of the store.
There are regular stations
throughout the showroom with pencils and papers set up to write down all the
information you need so you can find what you wanted. Using this brilliant
method, you can go through and find everything you want without hauling it
through the entire store with you and then simply pick it all up at the end.
This is very convenient for the customers, and from a selling perspective it
helps customers remember what they wanted to buy.
So, this is
the store that I went on a road trip to with my wife and her sister. Three
introverts in a huge, crowded building, browsing the furnishing for what we
needed. It was an interesting mix. We all had a great time and, of course,
found lots to buy (well, not my sister-in-law; she was along for the ride).
Something
that stuck out a lot from this trip was the discovery that it is apparently necessary
to have signs on the showroom toilets declaring that they are for display
purposes only. This is one of those small things that make me weep for
humanity.
We also
discovered how wonderful the staff there was when we made a little mistake at
the checkout – specifically, we forgot that we had a gift card until right
after we’d paid. Up until that point, it had seemed like your usual store with
employees doing their jobs, but to correct this situation a supervisor needed
to be called in. In spite of how busy they were, they solved the problem and
were very friendly about it. It was really nice to see the personal side of the
workers there.
After that,
we (barely) managed to squeeze everything and everyone into the car and headed
for home. Where, of course, we had to build one of our new shelving units –
what’s a trip to Ikea without putting together furniture afterwards, right?
The moral
of the story is: shop at Ikea – it’s like a furniture theme park – and make a
mistake at the cash register so you can see how nice the staff are. But make
sure you’re at the same Ikea as we were and that you have the same cashier otherwise
you might get different results.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
