Ikea, perfect getaway for the Chinese
For most people, Ikea is the place where you spend Saturday afternoon waiting in a long queue to pay for some inexpensive furniture. Not for the Chinese. They've discovered that spending the day reading, sleeping and chatting on a brand new black sofa is much cheaper if you don't leave the shop with it. Read more...
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Posted on kdslife.
For most people, Ikea is the place where you spend Saturday afternoon waiting in a long queue to pay for some inexpensive furniture. Not for the Chinese. They've discovered that spending the day reading, sleeping and chatting on a brand new black sofa is much cheaper if you don't leave the shop with it.
For some weeks now, Chinese Web users have been amusing themselves by posting photos taken in Shanghai's Ikea store. Passers-by stop to stare at what appears to be residents of the Swedish chain. It's not only the beds and the sofas that attract nap-seekers. The restaurant is pretty popular too. It seems that coffee, biscuits and re-fill soda in an air-conditioned canteen is a great way to spend your weekend in Shanghai.
A former Ikea worker posted this comment on an online forum:
"I worked in the bed section of Ikea. We often had to ask clients to leave because they were snoring. They were very angry to be woken up and some even made complaints to the manager."
Photoshoot in Ikea
“Ikea hasn’t made any complaints about their Chinese shoppers”
Du Xiaodon is a student from Shanghai who occasionally works at Ikea.
The average monthly income for someone from Beijing, Shanghai or Shenzhen - where Ikea has shops - is around 3,000 to 4,000 RMB [€300 - €400]. An EKTORP sofa itself costs 3,500 RMB - the same price as in the US and Europe. So I think that's why most people go there to do window shopping rather than real shopping. You see a lot of people with cameras. Some of them simply want to have pictures of the pretty furniture, others are design imitators, who then use the image to get a carpenter to copy it.
It's true that people go for ‘outings' to Ikea with their kids, and they do sit down in the chairs and have a lie down on the beds. But they only stay for a few minutes. There are few people sleeping like you see in the photos put online.
Ikea hasn't made any complaints about their Chinese shoppers. I think the company is optimistic about its market in China. They built five stores in the country between 2005 and 2009, and their sales have increased 25% each year, while only 10% in the rest of the world."
Ikea, Shanghai's leisure park
Photos posted onbjmsg.