I've bought some flat-pack furniture from some of IKEA's competitors. After having struggled through putting that together I have to say I have new found respect for the amount of thought and design IKEA must put into how their furniture goes together.
Never bought any furniture from Ikea. The furniture I have bought from other low end places generally has very low res and out of proportion drawings. Its not a crazy conspiracy that the manuals are not very well put together. If you think about it economically, they already have your money by the time you've opened the box and tried to piece your furniture together.
If you think about it economically they only have a tiny fraction of my money. Sure they have the $60 I just spend on a new side table, but they don't have the countless thousands I'll be spending on a new bed, bookshelf, kitchen, dining room table etc. etc. over the next decade. Why on earth wouldn't they want to try to grab that money as well.
Low end furniture competes on price more than brand. If you bought a really cheap side table, they know you'll probably but a really cheap bed -- whether it's made by them or not.
I've observed that many people react badly when presented with instructions that come with a purchased product. ("I can't/don't read manuals," etc.) This bias tends to sabotage their attempts to follow them once they do concede that the instructions might be useful. ("See? These instructions are useless, that's why I never bother with them.") Combine this with the fact that spatial-temporal reasoning skill seems to vary quite a bit across the population.
If you've ever watched Canada's Worst Handyman, you'll see that this kind of attitude is quite prevalent with them. Now I know that this doesn't give us causation, but it's a pretty strong correlation.
After watching a few videos from that show, I swear we have hired some of those people to do work on our rental properties. I have some pictures of bad work that I really need to put up on my blog.
Try buying some assemble-your-own furniture from Target or Wal-Mart. You'll get that much more appreciation for the ease of assembling IKEA furniture and how much sturdier the IKEA furniture is.
They really could use a few words on some of the instructions, but that would violate their "one package for all countries" philosophy.
Also, have you ever tried to hang a pair of doors straight? Their hinges have like 9 degrees of freedom, which doesn't really help. Plus I don't think it is actually possible on this TV cabinet I have, since it isn't actually square once you put a TV on it.
Yeah - their backings (or whatever they're called) on drawers and bookcases are really flimsy. We purchased an entertainment unit from them a few years ago, and I ditched the cardboard-like backs and nailed a strip of solid wood diagonally across the back. Not as pretty, but you need access through the back anyway and the wood kept the structure much more rigid than was originally designed.
Pandering much? This is Hacker news, you have to show how you assembled several packages in a creative way to get in. But, yeah: “outside” there is an alarming proportion of people who get upset for hours, failing at what I did blindfolded at 11.
Most things are extremely easy, but there are some individual packages that are horrible. I remember putting up a wardrobe that seriously took a whole day to assemble. All parts were there though!
Am I the only one that enjoy assembling flat-pack furniture and believe it is extremely easy?.