How Good Design Made It Hard to Find a Place to Sleep

A while ago I noted that the opening of the first IKEA store in Utah had created significant traffic snarls for days. Well, apparently in Portland this week it was even worse.

One of our interns, Derek Caswell, reported that a new IKEA store opened in Portland this morning. He had stayed for a long weekend with family in Eugene and stayed in a Portland hotel last night prior to catching his flight back to Utah. He caught wind of the IKEA event when someone mentioned how lucky he was to get a room.

When he asked why, he was told that most hotels were fully booked—because of the IKEA opening today! People apparently traveled from all around and stayed the night in a hotel in order to get in line early on opening day.

As was the case here in Utah, the local transportation office published an IKEA Traffic Flow Plan and the airport posted a Traffic Advisory to handle the massive volume of opening day. A web search also turned up lots of other buzz around the event, including one titled, “The Swedish are Coming! The Swedish are Coming!”

When people will go to such lengths just to walk into your store for the first time, when the local transportation department and airport have to make special arrangements to handle the traffic (not for hours, but for weeks, according to the advisory), when people book all the hotels in town early just to get in the door—you are doing something awfully right.

As I said before—in my opinion, it’s not just the products, it’s the design of the whole IKEA experience, from the products, to the pricing, to the floorplan, to the food and other cultural touches, to the packaging, all the way through the instructions and assembly.

If you haven’t been, check it out. And bring your design notebook.

posted by Ted Boren on Wednesday, Jul 25, 2007
tagged with design, experience, ikea