King Marketing

I should begin with a disclaimer: My own home has something by Ikea in literally every room. I genuinely admire their commitment to bringing stylish modernism to the masses. It’s beyond me why an Eames LCW chair made of $5 worth of bent plywood costs $600 CDN a pop when Ikea do a similar one for $50; I’m sure they’re union-made, but I doubt the costs are a significant part of the price, assuming equal technology.

I have shopped at Wal-Marts; both the reasonably-sized ones here, and the gargantuan, small-town-in-itself-sized ones in the United States. On paper, their massive-central-purchasing mode of bringing prices down seems to make perfect sense, and, even as we have great misgivings about their impact on local and national economies, one cannot help but admire how it all works.

Canadians like Ikea in part because we like to think of ourselves as a bit Scandinavian, too; people of the north with liberal mores, social-democracies with state healthcare. In real terms, Ikea has made some encouraging steps towards green product sourcing and I’ve never heard of them having a labour dispute.

We are a little more aware of the price tag that comes with a Wal-Mart; they shut a store in Jonquière where the employees were about to unionize. Still, millions of Quebecers shop there on the magic assumption that they have the lowest price in the market. It’s not as politically correct a brand as Ikea, however, for many well-known reasons.

Now - ignore all those well-known tropes and arguments, because there’s a larger issue underneath: neither of these chains will be able to do business as they currently do for very much longer.

Think of them both as systems rather than as brands for a minute. Products are sourced from all over the world; shipped from all over the world; vast resources are consumed (wood, plastic, metal, and especially, oil and energy). The stores are large-surface big-box outlets surrounded by acres of parking, which require large energy inputs for heating and cooling and create heat island effects. They are located out in the burbs and exurbs, you need a car to get to them: they contribute to sprawl. They displace wildness, watersheds, habitat, carbon sinks and other “net positives” of the unbuilt environment.

In that sense, Ikea is as much a “bad design” as Wal-Mart is.

In a world where crude oil and refined fuel costs will only go higher - in short, one that will soon run out of cheap oil energy - the entire supply chain of both Ikea and Wal-Mart (the famed “warehouses on wheels”) will collapse.

If Ikea is to continue, it’s going to have to shift to local production; ship bits rather than atoms, licensing designs from the central office to local artisans, to produce bespoke editions of their wares on-demand, adapting to local conditions and materials.

I don’t know if Wal-Mart would survive at all, given it’s incredible price-sensitivity.

I have some more thoughts about greening the Big Boxes, and I’ll post those soon. In the meantime, what are your thoughts and ideas? How do you feel about Ikea and Wal-Mart, together or separately? What future do you see for large-surface retail?