Ikea is not the community it serves
We have now secured an office space! Yay! Pretty soon, Citizen Agency will be residing in South Park at 425 Second Street.
Egad, it feels good. After working in our living room and coffee shops for the past 3 months (as well as part-time at Teh Hat Factory, which is totally thriving and open for bizness), we finally signed the lease stuff this weekend. Early October, Citizen Agency will have a real office with a real address and a key and...
...crap...
The work isn't quite done yet. We are working with our wonderful new landlord to get the nearly 100 year-old hardwood refinished, the 14 foot walls re-painted and the myriad of things that need to be fixed and made ready fixed and ready. Then there will be the connectivity. Very important. And should we have phone lines?
Man. That's one thing.
Then there is somewhere to sit and put our laptops down. We have received some great advice from people on where to get our furniture used - mostly recycled from the *gulp* failed 1.0 startups. Besides the bad Feng Shui that must be attached to those Aeron Chairs, they happen to still be hella expensive! Only $535/chair? Um. We need, like, 10. And, um...we have an income....but not a big bag of funding. I was thinking more like spending a total of $5,000 on the whole office full of furniture...including boardroom table. Heh.
So, we'll have to head to Craigslist and our good friend, Ivan (and co-officemate) promises to point us to the 'green' and 'salvaged' area of the world. But, in the meantime, I thought I'd check out our old college friend, Ikea, for some quotes.
Ikea, as I recall, was once said to be, "Swedish for common sense."
It seems, however, that this was merely a clever advertising byline, and, in actuality, Ikea really means, "Swedish for confuse and bewilder."
Have you been to their website? How does this thing help you? Take a look at the screenshot...can you see a link for office furniture? I don't want to know about the shipping yet. I want to browse the furniture. I want to see what a boardroom table costs and what my options are. Then tell me about my shipping options. I suppose they hired some smartass web firm that thought that they should re-create some offline experience of walking through the showroom.
Um. Hello? If I had the time to wander through your bloody showroom, I would. Believe me. What I would love more than anything is the kind of time that affords me an afternoon to wander through Ikealand. But I don't have that. I have a laptop and wifi and clients breathing down my neck and an office to furnish in the next couple of weeks on a budget of next to nothing.
[Am I mistaken in thinking that Ikea is the place that you go before you can afford real furniture? And, don't get me wrong. That is a good marketplace. There are a crapload of people who reside in that budget range. It's not a place of shame...really...although I know we all aspire to buy furniture that just looks like Ikea, but costs more. Like Roche Bobois or something. But no matter whether we are making $25k or $125k, we never quite escape the blue and yellow empire.]
Man, Ikea. Please stop trying to create an 'experience' online and allow me to look at the bloomin' furniture.
Now...Pinko-wise...what is the very simplest thing that Ikea could do here?
I have a couple-a ideas:
- having already established their 'verticals' (small business and kitchen renos), they could actually sit down and put themselves through the process:
- with very little time, browse the entire market for furniture that: a. is inexpensive, b. is responsible and c. is dead-simple to set up
- time how long it takes to do this on every site out there
- fix their online experience
- Well, since they took the time to suss out an entirely different site for their small business customers, they could:
- add a section for used business furniture
- allow small business customers to communicate with one another, giving one another tips on that furniture thing
- hell, have a Craigslist feed come into each piece that is listed ('cause there is a helluvalotta Ikea furniture on Craigslist)
- Offer an upsell to make my life easier. I don't actually care too much about laying out the office. I just want to make the best use of my space for my needs. 8 people + 3-4 collaborators (nomadic types). A boardroom that can sit 12. Collaborative, but some private desks. A travellable area (maybe a sitting, social space up front). 1350 square feet. Long. Narrow. Give me some options. I have no idea. I'll pay extra for that.
12 Comments:
The first thing I would say is don't feel like you have to rush to furnish your office. While there is a deadline, it's not as set in stone as you may think. It won't kill you to work out of your home for a few more weeks if it means getting the best buy on stuff and saving thousands of dollars -- and more importantly, being happy with what you buy.
I suppose Simpli lucked out with our office. When we toured it, there was a ton of stuff already in the office. I asked the landlord what was going on, and he said the company was in bankruptcy. He hooked me up with their bankruptcy attorney. One of my employees and I did an inventory and estimated the stuff was worth about $9000: Printers, computers, 5 desks, lamps, desk chairs, a conference table and chairs, work tables, filing cabinets, storage cabinets, bathroom items, and even two laptops and a projector screen. The bankruptcy attorney said they wouldn't reject any reasonable offer, so I offered $1500... and got THE WHOLE OFFICE. Seriously. I've never had to buy a desk chair, desk, or anything for Simpli...
So, if you can, find someone who specializes in office bankruptcy auctions and take a whole huge package deal like this. I estimate we saved over $10,000 by doing it this way. Like I said, it's worth the wait (it takes 20 days for the creditors to OK a bankruptcy asset buyout, so you will have to wait.)
Oh, and do VoIP for your phones. Our office bankruptcy package came with a whole 3Com phone system with 6 phones, but it works with Vonage just great. ;) We have Vonage's business package so we can use a fax line too... with a fax machine I picked up for free. w00t!
I have noticed the cheap ikea office dek has become the start-up table of choise. It looks much better than a fold-up conference table and $100 a pup is pretty decent for new. Of course used cubes are still the front-runner ;>
We use a picic table and fence gate for two of our founder desks. Doors with legs serve as our conference tables. As a consultancy I suppose frist impressions are important, but like everything else, try not to spend money you don't have and try and get as good as possible at saying "and we pass the savings on to you" Woot!
Congrats on the new office. Your address alone will reel in some big fish.
Office Depot has some good enough ergo chairs for under $100 a pop. And conference chairs for $50.
I woked in an office once that used a series of recycled opaque sliding shower doors on used filing cabinets for desks. They were cool and cheap.
Check out Urban Ore in Berkely or in SF if you want to get crafty with cool reuse furnishing.
oh the typos I type.
dek = desk
pup = pop
picic = picnic
Most of the other typos should be clear enough in meaning ;>
Tara, to be fair, Ikea is branching into the SMB furniture marketplace and as such appears to want to create an experience for their potential customers who may indeed want to plan their space with specs and layouts online, etc. For people who don't want the whole experience they have a link on their homepage to "Work Area" which then contains links to meeting tables, etc.
It may not be the most intuitive website, and the integration between the "explore" pieces and the fundamentals, but it certainly doesn't hide, or really make it all that difficult to find the clear links to their products.
i like the swedish meatballs. yum. meatballs. i MUST mail you a nice piece of cool art for your new office.
Mr. Stanton and His Amazing Marmoset
i like the swedish meatballs. yum. meatballs. i MUST mail you a nice piece of cool art for your new office.
Mr. Stanton and His Amazing Marmoset
We recently moved to a new office and bought a bunch of stuff from Ikea. Here's a tip: they have people on staff who are there specifically to consult with small business owners who need to furnish their offices. Call your nearest store, make an appointment, and assuming you get someone competent, you will get to see efficiency in action. We got our whole office organized in the space of a one-hour appointment. (Way less time than it would've taken to mess around on the website.)
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Tamera said "It may not be the most intuitive website, and the integration between the "explore" pieces and the fundamentals, but it certainly doesn't hide, or really make it all that difficult to find the clear links to their products."
If it only it was enough for websites to just be accessible. That would certainly make things easier. Unfortunately, those websites have to be intuitive/usable as well. I forget the exact number at the moment (I will try to find it and post it up later) but websites have something like less than a minute to give a good impression on a new user on their site. If they don't, they lose that user forever. That being the case, intuitive-ness and usability should certainly be a priority if you're offering products online. You owe that to your customers.
Agreed. Tara said it best, "How does this thing help you?" Really, does anything else matter?
And what does "Work Area" mean? Who's work area, what is this area for?
Bah! Bah two times,
Tara, you got the translation wrong. IKEA *really* means "Swedish for out of stock"
;)
- Stuart
I'm Swedish, and can assure you that "Ikea" doesn't mean anything. It's probably just an abbreviation. :)
(And yes, meatballs are great. ;))
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