Fast Company has the story of how IKEA’s online store basically shat the bed during the pandemic. With physical stores closed, the only way to buy things from IKEA was to order online, which completely overwhelmed their inventory management, delivery and customer service infrastructure. Based on the horror stories from the r/IKEA subreddit (which also informed the FC article), and our own experience (we made a small order early in March that took nearly two months to get here: we got off easy), it seems clear that IKEA’s supply lines were mostly aimed at their stores; they treated online and home delivery as an under-resourced afterthought. That didn’t turn out well.
How the Pandemic Defeated IKEA
Jonathan Crowe
Jonathan Crowe blogs about maps at The Map Room and writes and reviews science fiction and fantasy; his work has been published by AE, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and Tor.com. He lives in Shawville, Quebec.
That sounds ominous.