Oh, IKEA. We applaud your green initiatives: taking the formaldehyde out of your products; charging a nickel for a plastic bag; making a public commitment to phase out PVC in both your products and your packaging... and we're sure we're forgetting a few other green deeds.
But when we stumbled upon, happenstance, a promotion for your Tempe, Arizona, store, we sighed. This sigh was not a sigh of contentment at reasonably priced, well designed, mass market housewares. Rather, it was a sigh of disappointment at this promotion:
HELP REDUCE C02 EMISSIONS BY USING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION! Bring in your monthly bus pass to the AS-IS section of the store any day of the week, and receive an additional 10% OFF discount on AS-IS purchases only - on products $20 or more. Not valid on previous purchases and cannot be combined with any other offers. See store for more details.
If you've been to IKEA, the above conjures up a comical image of some poor bus pass holder lugging a lightly used, heavily discounted Swedish bookshelf up the front steps of a bus. If you haven't been to IKEA, let us explain:
• the bulk of IKEA products are made of particleboard and are therefore very heavy;
• most IKEA products are sold "knocked down," which is a fancy way of saying you have to put it together yourself;
• however, AS-IS is the section of the store where IKEA offloads floor models and returns: ergo, things that have already been assembled. Heavy things that have already been assembled. Heavy, large things that have already been assembled and that are unlikely to fit through, much less be allowed on, a public bus.
We applaud IKEA for giving props to people who use public transportation, but perhaps a free cup of coffee (or, in Arizona, an ice-cold lemonade) might be a better promotion that recognizes that the vast majority of IKEA's merchandise leaves the store strapped to the roof of a car or stashed in the back of an SUV.
image via about.com
You do know that they do home delivery? Or that people who don't have cars often rent cars when planning a big ikea trip?
view Max's profile
I agree that it's a pretty silly, limited promotion, but they don't actually say that you have to take the bus TO IKEA. You just have to show that you have a bus pass.
view Joan A.'s profile
I see it as aiming towards people who use buses for commuting, not necessarily to get to IKEA to pick up furniture. That said, in NYC, plenty of people take advantage of IKEA's free bus service on the weekends. I've done it. Its a pain, but it can beat renting a car if you're not pickup up a sofa.
view dahlia's profile
Good point, jonathanB.
The promotion can work anyway (as others are pointing out), but it's certainly not in harmony with itself.
view Sea's profile
Not to mention that almost all Ikeas are situated on the very edge of cities, where public transportation generally ranges from crap to totally nonexistent.
(Someone above mentioned a free bus - I don't think that's universal as I've certainly never heard of one here.)
view Kuri's profile
the MTA here in NYC has promos like this all the time. (present your Metrocard at X museum for a discount...) I think it's just about being someone who uses public transportation, not someone who carries their furniture stuff home on the bus with them.
view Eliza's profile
Woohoo that'd be good for me. I have a Chicago pass, but always drive to go to IKEA because it's in BFE, and I enjoy the thrill of trying to drive home with furniture bungied to the trunk of my lil hatchback ;)
view lisbet's profile
Um, am I the only one in the San Francisco Bay Area who takes BART from San Francisco to the MacArthur station and then takes the free Emeryville shuttle from the BART station to the IKEA store? I've carried desk chairs home from IKEA on public transit. Textiles, bedding, lamps, frames . . . IKEA sells lots of things that fit in a backpack or two. The AS-IS discount is pretty bogus, though.
view JefferyK's profile
There are multiple levels of irony at work with the Tempe IKEA promotion. It's waaaaaayyyyy the heck out at the bottom of Tempe, where the industrial parks and strip malls have had to grow to meet it. There is indeed a bus that runs to it (we saw it on Sunday!), but the huge parking lot is usually jammed with cars. Their entire location is an affront to the ozone layer.
Since you'd have to pay the $40 delivery fee for anything sizable, that 10% discount doesn't come to much. But Tempe's scratch-and-dent section does sometimes have smaller stuff.
view wende in the twin cities's profile
You don't get free coffee Tuesdays in IKEA US? We do here in Greece!
view Stratos's profile
'wende in phoenix' get's it. arizona is just that way. I have since moved to chicago to live car-free and bike-happy.
view a.g.'s profile
The first thing I saw when I clicked that link was that the store is going to cover 23 acres, and have 1,300 parking spaces... I thought surely the outrage would be at that, that size puts SuperWalmart to shame.
view quiningseven's profile