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Lovers of Ikea furniture
Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2008 | 2 a.m.
Loving Ikea isn’t easy when you live in Vegas. The nearest store is at least a four-hour drive away. It’s heartbreaking, really, having all that affordable contemporary Swedish furniture out of reach.
William Crozer, and his wife, Carrie Mauriello Crozer, feel your pain.
If you want something from Ikea, the couple will drive to Southern California and bring it back to you. Their business, ModernLV.com, charges a flat fee and a price-based percentage. They post updates on Twitter from the store. Mauriello Crozer will be your personal shopper. They participate in a carbon offset program with each trip. They’re making money. But it’s more than just profit motive for these Ikea die-hards, who own a marketing company.
Why do you do this?
William: We’ve always been Ikea-oriented. We’ve always felt that there should be one here. There is a demand for Ikea and Ikea isn’t opening here so why don’t we become leaders of the Ikea tribe in Las Vegas? There is a profit motive, but most importantly, it’s about bringing together the Ikea nation in Vegas. People are very passionate about Ikea.
You use a truck for big orders, but can you fit a lot in the Prius?
Carrie: We’ve put seven Billy Bookcases in and still had room for more.
What do you like best about Ikea?
William: The question is, what don’t you like about Ikea. It’s affordable. There’s the quality, the design.
Carrie: I like the design, the utility. It’s functional, organized. It’s so interconnected. I like the personal shopping aspect, helping people with their space.
Why the carbon offset program?
Carrie: We shouldn’t be using any more resources that we need. That’s the Ikea mentality. Anything we get involved in we try to pull into that whole environmental aspect.
How far will this go?
William: It’s about helping Ikea extend their empire to Las Vegas. If that concludes with an Ikea opening here in Las Vegas, we’d be very happy about that. We’d feel like we actually did something to help out.
What’s next? Ikea parties?
William: You’re not so far off. We want to try to have a meet-up where we can meet somewhere like Whole Foods, bring some catalogs and the Ikea book “Beloved Homes.” It’s a lifestyle as much as it is a retail experience. Let’s love our Ikea-ness.
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The best comment I heard about IKEA is that most of it looks like it belongs in a dorm room. I've spent several hours at the store in Burbank, and all I've ever bought is kitchen utensils and a lamp.
that is a really good idea ! I love Ikea, I wrote them to suggest an opening in vegas but they never responded... hopefully one day....
I really don't understand the whole IKEA thing. How can having garbage as furniture be fashionable?
The IKEA mentality is as follows, "come to our fun store, buy crap, brag about your crap and come back soon"
And what kind of business brags about their delivery vehicle being a prius? Oh that's right the touchy feely I am doing something for mother earth crowd.
Carbon offsets, are you kidding me? If you bought furniture that was made of wood that lasted you wouldn't need to offset anything. One trip to the store would do it.
First, I'm not impartial, my wife and I run http://www.ikeafans.com/ so I have a preference, clearly :).
But I also have about 3-4 years of experience dealing with every aspect of IKEA Products, business model and policies, so I have some idea what I'm talking about.
1. Many folks have the kneejerk IKEA=cheap Dorm furniture reaction. And that's simply not true. The cheapest furniture IKEA sells IS cheap dorm furniture, but the nicer quality stuff is very nice indeed. It's all about bang for your buck, if you buy the cheap stuff that's what you get, if you buy the more expensive things you get really nice furniture. Ask anyone that's ever owned a Poang chair for example :).
2. IKEA is heavily based on the concept of automatic selling, they simply DON'T do customer service the way folks here in North America expect. The end result is that their customer service is quite spotty. You CAN get good service, but it's more a function of the individual co-workers than the corporate focus. They focus on good design for a great price NOT Neiman Marcus class service.
3. The Kitchen system in particular is orders of magnitude better than folks expect, it's really high end stuff with all BLUM hardware, amazing options and price/quality that CANNOT be beat.
Anyway, IKEA's not for everyone, but they really and truly are committed to their environmental initiatives, and you can get a LOT more value for your money if you do some research and use some common sense.
And giving a company (ModernLV) a hard time about using a highly energy efficient vehicle to handle deliveries that don't need a monster gas guzzling truck, well, that seems kinda silly. I'd totally rather see them using a Prius where it's reasonable than delivering a single Billy Bookcase using a H2, just because they could claim it as "heavy equipment" on their taxes ;-)
Obviously YMMV widely though, everyones totally entitled to their own opinion!
James