Despite what you may have heard, I do not spend all of my time following IKEA’s every move and hacking their furniture into cat habitats. But I do enjoy good design at prices that are actually within my reach, so I was bummed to have missed the limited-edition re-release of IKEA’s Ekenäset chair. By the time I clued in to the sleek wood and slubby linen-blend cover, it was still on the website but out of stock at every location I checked. And I checked every location in the US.
So I had nothing to lose trying to get the inside track on social media. I didn’t expect anything but I tweeted anyway.
I’ll spare you the additional tweets and DMs, but eventually I got the tweet I was looking for, my twitter buddy at the store spied some Ekenäsets in the “as-is” section. The race was on. The goods were on the showroom floor, I was in a race against anybody who might be wandering by with an eye for some mid-century revival seating at 30% off. Having already studied the assembly instructions online, I packed up my cordless drill with allen key bit and a couple of wrenches – as-is items is usually assembled and I would have to disassemble the chairs to get them into my car – and headed out.
Into yet another Boston-area snowstorm. At rush hour. On 93 South. A horrible 90 minutes later, dizzy, dehydrated, shaking with road rage, I staggered into the store, not even pausing for fortifying meatballs, and made a beeline for the as-is section.
There they were, two Ekenäset chairs, just sitting there, one up on a little platform right at the entrance to the as-is section. I sat in one, then the other. They seemed sound, clean, unblemished, not covered in pet hair. I put one on my cart and turned the other over to double-check my plan of disassembly. A woman nearby said, “you know there are some in those boxes over there, too, right?”
In the boxes? As in new? NIB and NWT? Could it be? I checked the boxes. I matched the product numbers. I asked a passing associate. Yes, there were four more Ekenäset chairs. They were all 30% off. They were still packed in their boxes, nothing as-is about them but the price. What crazy Swedish capitalism makes things cheaper when they get scarce? I could buy the lot of them and flip them on craigslist for full price if not more!
I backed away from that madness and heaved two boxes onto my cart. On the way out of the store I dropped a tweet of thanks to my inside informant and noted that four chairs remained, two still in their boxes. I hope they’ve gone to good homes.