Business
what’s in a name ?
Toilet seats called ‘Øresund’ and doormats named after small Danish towns…. Is Ikea having a laugh at Denmark’s expense? We put it to them straight
In the 50 years since it opened its first superstore, Ikea has aroused a fair amount of hostility. This usually occurs for one of two reasons: the difficulty faced by those lacking a degree in spatial physics when they try to assemble the flatpack furniture that has netted the Swedish founder, Ingvar Kamprad, his €20bn fortune; or the fact that the 583 million customers who visit his 275 stores every weekend always seem to converge on the checkouts at precisely the same moment.
More recently, however, a third sort of Ikea rage has materialised. It is limited to Denmark, but such is its intensity that the Oresund bridge has wobbled like a haphazardly constructed Billy bookcase.
Indeed, it is the names of Ikea products that has incensed some Danes. Recently, the daily newspaper Nyhedsavisen mischievously accused the Swedish furniture giant of “bullying” Denmark by naming its doormats and floor coverings after Danish towns. Meanwhile, the paper helpfully pointed out, Swedish and Norwegian place names are always associated with the most prestigious furnishings in the store’s catalogue. There is a luxurious leather sofa, for example, called the Stockholm (“super-fancy quality for everyone” crows the Ikea website); the Mandal range of sexy black bedroom furniture named after a Norwegian town best known for its annual shellfish festival; and all manner of sturdy wooden dining tables and chairs that honour Finnish settlements.
“Köge, Sindal, Roskilde, Bellinge, Strib, Helsingör and Nivå are all ‘seventh class’ citizens in the hierarchical world of Ikea furnishings”, harrumphed the floor-surveying Klaus Kjøller, assistant professor in political communication and the Danish language at the University of Copenhagen. “It seems to be an example of cultural imperialism. I don’t think this can be a coincidence,” he concluded to the sympathetic Nyhedsavisen.
Yet according to Charlotte Lindgren, Ikea’s international press officer, that is exactly what it is. Endearingly veering between stern PR-speak and a late Friday afternoon fit of giggles, Lindgren insisted to Sterling: “It has never been our purpose to name carpets in a way that would be considered offensive to anyone. We have a very good relation with Denmark and have been in Denmark for a long time. It is just a sad coincidence.”
Meanwhile, a chipper Nikki Cradock, in Ikea’s London press office, expounded that the christening of products was a pretty random affair. “All names originate from Sweden but sometimes the designers name products themselves – the Ivar shelving system, for example – occasionally after the city they’re from. Sometimes a name is chosen for convenience because it mean the same in every country”. This isn’t always successful, as evidenced by the Gutvik bedframe. As the word can be pronounced Gootfick, there is probably not a German-speaking newlywed who did not blush like a lingonberry at the checkout.
In fact, there is a Da Vinci-like code to Ikea’s product-naming. Swedish placenames are given to all upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage and doorknobs. Garden furniture is named after Swedish islands. Beds, wardrobes and hall furniture earn Norwegian place names while dining tables and chairs collect Finnish ones. Carpets and rugs, as has been established, are named after Danish places.
Considering the goodnatured rivalry between Sweden and Denmark – goodnatured compared with the two countries’ mood during The Seven Years’ War, say – the striped Strib rug and the beige Sindal coir mat do not seem too provocative to the outsider. It isn’t as if the Roskilde rug is splattered with mud and beer like the town itself for most of the summer. Indeed, one could suggest that naming dining tables after towns in Finland – the least gastronomically celebrated of all the Nordic countries – is a far funnier joke. As for the poor old Icelanders! Those proud people don’t get so much as an ice-scraper named after them.
And it isn’t as if Ingvar Kamprad is a raving nationalist. Although born in Agunnaryd in Scania, for years he has lived in a villa in Switzerland and Ikea is ultimately owned by a tax-efficient Dutch trust controlled by his family.
Indeed most Ikea products are as neutral as a Toblerone. Bookcase ranges are named after occupations (Billy is presumably named after the designer); bathroom articles are named after Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays; kitchens after grammatical terms; chairs and desks after men’s names; materials and curtains, women’s names; lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months and days; bedlinen, bed covers and pillows are named for flowers, plants, precious stones or words related to sleep, comfort, and cuddling; childrens items are named after animals or birds; curtain accessories, mathematical and geometrical terms; kitchen utensils, foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries. Finally, boxes, wall decorations, frames and clocks are named after colloquial expressions, although some do honour those never-ending Swedish placenames.
Nyhedsavisen’s editor, Simon Andersen admits that the recent pop at Ikea was tongue-in-cheek aimed at those ‘so-perfect’ Swedes,” yet the whole episode illustrates the perennial rivalry between two competitive nations. And there is nothing as competitive as business. For example, Steve Stenhouse the UK chief of Danish furniture chain Jysk, which is present in 32 countries, sniffs: “we have deliberately avoided huge hangars. It won’t take you two or three hours to get around one of our stores”.
But few Danes are even aware that Ikea has not just been filling Danish homes since 1969; it has actually been building them. The furniture giant joined forces with Swedish construction firm Skanska in the 1990s to create flat-pack residences in an attempt to tackle Sweden’s lack of affordable properties. The venture BoKlok has been so successful with its open-planned timber-framed dwellings with high ceilings and large windows, the concept has been introduced in Finland, Norway and – ever so quietly – in Denmark.
The ironic thing is that Ikea could easily have ended up a Danish company. Denmark owned Scania until 350 years ago, when Swedish troops invaded the provinces on the southernmost tip of the Scandinavian peninsula.
And they probably brandished expensive and badly designed weapons.
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