by Jeremy Broun

Created on: October 11, 2009   Last Updated: October 12, 2009

I am a British furniture designer maker (established 1973) and my work is unfortunately relatively expensive because of scale of manufacture and the small market in Britain for really innovative modern furniture. I have this to say about IKEA quality:

Given that I live in a class-based society in Britain, it is inevitable that when IKEA eventually plucked up the courage and came to Britain in the 1990's (Britain was too traditional in its taste for furniture) it would be regarded as cheap crap by many, and not least the small tribe of people I belong to who create bespoke designer furniture.

The testing that IKEA does on its products is vastly more rigorous than any designer maker is likely to have the inclination or resources to do. Drawers are pulled in and out 30,000 times at prototype stage. The Arts and Crafts grandmaster Edward Barnsley spent a lot of his time traveling around the country re-fixing drawers he tightly made because the English seasons affected their functioning.

I received a Churchill Scholarship a few years ago to see what lessons could be learned from mass-production abroad, and amongst tens of factories I visited were IKEA in Sweden, ISKO in Finland, PP Mobler (Hans Wegner) in Denmark and Cassina in Italy (reproducing Rennie Macintosh chairs). The quality and choice at IKEA then was quite impressive and it has improved since.

I think it is easy to equate 'disposable crap' with 'unrealistically low retail price' and the way consumers perceive and abuse cheap furniture. IKEA furniture tends to get disposed of largely by choice and has little to do with quality of design or manufacture. The unrealistically low price is because of huge exploitation of cheap labor markets (ethically questionable and we choose not to question) and the cleverness of self-assembly and flat pack, significantly reducing unit costs.

I have several IKEA items in my home, and some nearly twenty years old and still in good service. The British have a slight problem with assembling four scan bolts and re-checking their tightness a few months later when the wood is in equilibrium with domestic humidity, a major factor in the prejudice that it is inferior-quality furniture. IKEA designers are clever people working in a highly-disciplined environment.

Chipboard and MDF are used by IKEA and designer makers alike for veneering. Interestingly, designer makers in England were using Masur bok (birch) veneer before IKEA started, and IKEA had a reputation for poaching the designs

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