Northern highlights: The lure of Scandi stores
Whether it’s Ikea, Jysk or Søstrene Grene, we can’t get enough of northern European homeware
‘Igot it in that shop with the name that nobody can pronounce,” said my friend, displaying a plainish rug. “You know, like Ikea, only different...” She had bought the rug in Jysk (pronounced ‘yoosk’), purveyor of affordably-priced Scandi homeware and number one pretender to the Ikea flatpack throne.
There is a fair amount of rivalry between the two brands. But delving a little deeper, there are as many differences between Ikea and Jysk as there are similarities.
Full disclosure — I’m an Ikea junkie. I like it so much that I go there for birthday outings (cheap date, I know). It’s meatballs and embroidered cushions all the way! I admire the designs, particular ceramics and textiles, but there’s more to it than that. There’s something a little bit cultish about my relationship with the Swedish superstore. On an existential level, it appeals to a longing to believe and belong. It also ignites a more specific hope: maybe a global superstore can actually be a force for good in the world?
Ikea’s founder, Ingvar Kamprad (1926-2018) certainly set out with a well-intentioned plan. His booklet, The Testament Of A Furniture Dealer (1976), reads like a catechism, a Little Red Book for egalitarian design: “To create a better everyday life for the many people by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them… The many people usually have limited financial resources. It is the many people whom we aim to serve. The first rule is to maintain an extremely low level of prices. But they must be low prices with a meaning. We must not compromise either functionality or technical quality.” So far, so worthy.
Kamprad’s liking for overarching belief structures had a darker side. He was once involved with the Swedish Nazi Party and was an admirer of Per Engdahl, who led the country’s antiSemitic fascist movement after the
Second World War. According to the Swedish journalist Elisabeth Åsbrink, Kamprad saw no contradiction between this strand of his life and his lifelong friendship with Otto Ullmann, a Jewish refugee whose parents had been murdered in Auschwitz.
The story broke in 2011 and, apart from a hasty $51m donation by Ikea to the United Nations refugee agency, caused remarkably little fuss. Kamprad remains the poster boy of honest Swedish enterprise and Ikea retains its loyal following. Maybe the positive aspects of the store outweigh the shadow on Kampard’s past.
Jysk, a Danish homeware brand founded by Lars Larsen in 1979, is more straightforward (but much less interesting). Ten years after Ikea opened in Dublin in 2009, Jysk opened its first shop in Naas. Since then, Jysk stores have popped up like mushrooms in Drogheda, Navan, Portlaoise, Limerick, Sligo, Waterford and Youghal. Next month, the first Dublin store opens in Gulliver’s Retail Park.
According to Jenny Johnston, Sales and Marketing Manager for Ireland and the UK, Jysk plans to open 40 stores in Ireland over the next few years.
“Most are in the planning stage, so I can’t say where yet, but it’s fair to say there’s room for many more in Dublin and Cork, plus we hope to open in locations like Longford, Tipperary, Carlow and Galway.”
This is good news for people who live in rural Ireland, which is chronically short of shops.
The scale of the shopping experience is one of the main differences between Ikea and Jysk. Ikea has two mammoth emporiums: one in Dublin and the other in Belfast. For people that enjoy Ikea, the immersive experience is part of the fun. It’s like a theme park where you can buy stuff. But some people find it a head-wreck. I’m not aware of a survey of marriages that have ended in Ikea, but you do overhear some heated conversations.
Ikea can be overwhelming, especially if you’ve travelled across the country to get there. Jysk outlets, in contrast, are on the underwhelming side. “We have a smalldoor policy,” Johnston says. “But with lots of doors.”
Then there are the prices. Both Ikea and Jysk are accessible, but Johnston claims Jysk prices are lower than those of their competitors for comparative items. “Where we really win is in our offers. They can be up to 70pc off.” It pays to shop around, but it’s also important to consider elements other than price. Despite its reputation for low-cost furniture, Ikea isn’t always the cheapest and its cheapest items aren’t always its best.
There is also a notable difference in the way the two stores design their products. Jysk products are brought in from a range of suppliers, while Ikea employs its own design team and collaborates with designers around the world. Some of these collaborations result in cool limited edition collections. The current Sammankoppla range is designed with Thai fashion designers Greyhound Original and inspired by the ethics of recycling, repurposing and reuse. It includes a rug (€10) woven from recycled PET bottles and an LED lamp (€19) that is inspired by a cut-off plastic bottle. It’s an interesting venture in Bangkok street chic, but I’d like the lamp better if it were actually made from refuse, rather than just looking as though it were.
Both stores are loud in their intentions towards sustainability and this is one of the areas in which competitiveness between brands seems entirely a good thing. This week, Ikea announced that all alkaline batteries will be removed from its home furnishing range by October 2021. This is intended to encourage customers to shift to recyclable batteries. Almost on the same day, Jysk announced that all of their new wooden products will be FSC certified by January 2022.
Then, to mix it up a bit more, we have a third Scandi-giant in the country. Søstrene Grene was founded by the Grene sisters, Anna and Clara, in 1973 and opened its first store in Ireland in 2015. Now there are five — Cork, Dublin (3) and Limerick — all selling (guess what) affordably priced Scandi-style homeware. The offering from Søstrene Grene is mainly smaller items and DIY crafting and, unlike Ikea and Jysk, they don’t sell online outside Denmark.
“Did you know that Søstrene Grene comes from Aarhus in Denmark?” says Johnston. “That’s the same city that Jysk comes from.” There must be something in the water.