IKEA comes to Cairo

IKEA is perhaps the most anticipated store to open in Cairo since GAP and Victoria’s Secret.

Known for good deals, good quality and a DIY (do it yourself) policy, the furniture and accessory giant hails from Sweden. After establishing a strong presence throughout Europe, it branched out to the rest of the world, and now has outlets in North America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Middle East.

Outside of the region, IKEA is a household name. People have joked for years about their inability to put IKEA’s items together or the laziness of those who don’t do it themselves. And it shows up frequently in pop culture: in the 1999 movie “Fight Club,” Robert Paulson is freed from his consumerist life when his apartment burns down, and all of his IKEA furniture is destroyed.

But enough references. Suffice it to say that IKEA is both good and bad — efficient, but definitely the Barnes & Nobles of the furniture industry, and its arrival in Cairo might just herald the end of a number of small local furniture makers.

To get an understanding of the store’s prices and offerings, I decided to take a quick perusal of Egypt’s first IKEA, which is located at the Festival City Mall off the Kattamiya road (near the Toyota dealership and after the exit for Kattamiya Heights).

Entering the maze

That “quick perusal” turned out to be not so quick. The store is enormous, and the exit is conveniently hidden. The shopping aisles (or “maze path,” as I like to call it) are designed to ensure you pass by every little section of furniture before you get anywhere near the escalators to take you out of the store.

For someone furnishing or accessorizing their home, I’d imagine the upper floor showroom is paradise. Even I was constantly tempted, and I already have a furnished home. It's hard to resist the perfectly planned out rooms, beautiful television tables and shelves, convenient and snazzy futons, bunk beds and beds that fold under other beds, birch chairs that are ridiculously comfortable with lumbar support … the list seems endless.

The showrooms are set up so you see a completely designed room as inspiration (and for some of the displays, whole room prices are available as well as prices for each individual piece). These model rooms are followed by showrooms that just highlight one type of furniture. After you’ve seen a number of bedrooms, for instance, there’s an area where you can take a better look at each bed the store offers individually.

The prices appear pretty reasonable, or at least, each furniture type has reasonably priced options. Beautiful desks (modern, simple lines, monochromatic) range from LE405 to LE2,000. Wall-mounted bookshelves also roam in this range — some for as little as LE195.

In fact, the number of items under the LE1,000 mark make it increasingly tempting to “need” more and more pieces of furniture or accessories as you go through the store.

Couches at IKEA are also priced in the LE1,000-5,000 range. On the local market, comparable imported furniture is hard to find at LE5,000. IKEA’s futons have cleaner lines and are better made and more comfortable than the futons available at stores in City Stars, and what is priced at LE800 at IKEA can be found elsewhere in Cairo at LE2,000.

Although the prices at local furniture maker Mffco and IKEA are similar for beds and bunk beds, variety at IKEA is considerably greater — with approximately 15 different bunk beds and 15 different beds, Mffco’s two bunk-bed styles and six bed-frame options cannot compare.

IKEA also offers kitchens and bathrooms — not the tiles, but the shelving, sinks and (of course) accessories. The kitchens at IKEA are perhaps the only price disappointment. Ranging from LE22,000 up to about LE45,000, the prices are similar to local store Amr Helmy, known for great kitchens but not-so-great prices.

When it comes to bathrooms and kitchens, you may think that this is where you draw the line with DIY, and IKEA will provide you with an employee to install the fixtures for you.

Information centers and IKEA rep “offices” appear sporadically throughout the store. The IKEA employees are dressed in bright yellow polo shirts and are surprisingly helpful. They have information on their products and know where things are. You can write down a product number and name (you are not supposed to take their model rooms apart) and then approach an IKEA rep to get it for you, or simply find it yourself (even if it is a bed) and take it away.

In the showroom, you’re more likely to pick up accessories like snazzy white and black boxes for storage (with labels) or random accessories like transparent plastic mats for desks and heat protecting cork pads for food. The big items, like couches, are located in the warehouse below.

Looking for a way out

When you do manage to exit the showroom floor — no, the exits are not visible and yes, you will have to ask someone to find them — your only option is to go down the escalators to the warehouse.

Once you’re down there, anyone looking for the exit at this point may become increasingly claustrophobic and panicked; despite the IKEA reps reassuring you the exit is right around the corner, you start to feel like IKEA is never going to end.

The first room you hit as you try to find your way out is full of dishes, glasses and kitchen accessories. Next is the light showroom, where standing lamps, wall-mounted lamps and ceiling lamps live, and then comes the enormous furniture warehouse.

If you were the true DIY type, you would have recorded the serial number of the furniture you want and come to the warehouse to “pick it up.”  Everything is packaged in flat cardboard packaging because, well, it’s a bunch of planks of wood and with your expertise, it’s going to become a bed or a closet or whatever it is meant to be. Of course, some items are impossible to get by yourself — enormous items up on shelves near the nearly eight-meter-high ceiling, for instance.

And finally, you are at the cash registers. For some reason, there is not yet an “express checkout,” which can be frustrating for someone coming to grab a couple accessories and be on their way. Although I stopped in at noon on a workday, the place was relatively crowded, and the wait in line was reminiscent of Carrefour on the weekends.

Uneasy competitors, happy customers

I wondered what local furniture stores thought about IKEA’s arrival, but the ones I spoke to didn’t seem worried.

Tarek Abdel Fattah, manager at Taki furniture, says that a lot of his customers have been asking about IKEA. “We knew this was coming, but our customers are loyal and our quality is good,” he explains.

Mffco sales reps were reluctant to comment on how IKEA might impact the store. One did not know what IKEA was, and the other said that Mffco was doing fine.

Furniture importers (and re-producers) White House add that IKEA hits a different market. “Our furniture is much more high-end,” says Marwa Hakim, a sales representative there.

As for consumer reactions, the comments I heard inside the store, read on Facebook and heard at the opening were positive. Many seasoned IKEA shoppers have given the store their seal of approval.

“The prices are not as cheap as they are in Europe,” says Fatma Rashid, “but they are cheaper than imported furniture in Cairo.”

Rashid is not surprised that the store is quickly filling up with shoppers, even at 10 am. “For Egypt, it’s new and beautiful and well-priced.”

Yasmine Ahmed probably summed up the general sentiment of IKEA visitors the best. Looking at a living room set up with a futon, a television and shelves and accessorized with cute mini storage boxes and wall stickers, she sighs, “I want it all.”