Stuff from that era was really good. High quality woods and good finishing work. Then it went downhill with the low point somewhere around '97 or so and since then it has been slowly climbing back up. But there is a long way to go if they ever want to get back to their old quality level and their profit margins would likely suffer as a consequence.
> their profit margins would likely suffer as a consequence
They would certainly have to raise prices if they raised the quality, and then they lose their customers to competitors who are cheaper (and even worse quality - have you ever tried the cheap furniture from a hardware store?)
Furniture is a competitive market, and IKEA are very aggressive at undercutting their competition (they have directives to never let their competitors be cheaper) and they manage to sustain profits though their scale of operations (and some good engineering - IKEA have hollow tables filled with cardboard that's more durable than some competitors solid MDF stuff).
Basically people aren't willing to pay for quality. IKEAs trick is to be both cheap and have an acceptable level of design and quality.
IKEA has several price/quality options. I’ve shopped there for a long time and slowly moved up the product line. Their breadth makes it hard to compete with.
On the low end, pretty much anything cheaper than IKEAs entry level is total garbage. I’m looking at you Target! That stuff is little better than a cardboard box.
On the high end, price rapidly outpaces quality. Every time I think “maybe I’ll get real furniture this time” the prices jump 10x. That’s just not worth it to me.
I agree. The jump to “real” furniture is ridiculous. Suddenly the dinner table cost $3000. And if you try to find something in between there are the stores whose main selling point seem to be that they aren’t IKEA. Their prices are double and the quality is worse than IKEA.
I’ve no direct experience with CB2, but my experience with furniture in that price range is that the quality usually is worse than IKEA. They might use mor expensive materials, but QA is usually bad.
