For a full detailed account of the following, please read John Doe VS Evil.
The double standard.
What everyone needs to know is… The YB products are supposed to be the same and manufactured the same way to the same specs around the world. There are numerous CAD files, spec sheets and photographed documentation on every single YB product. From the grades of the wood to the foam and chemical makeup of paint, plastics, leather and thread counts for example.
The reasons for this are quite simple. The YB want all of their products to sit and feel the same way across the globe and to be manufactured the same way. This was all fine until we forced them to finally ship us a Klippan sofa that was made in China.
Guess they lied…
As it turned out, nothing in the upholstery division was made the same way around the world and never to the same specs. The whole idea of uniformity varied from country to country for numerous reasons. Some being lumber availability, the polyurethane grades varying from place to place and of course production setups and general operations vary from company to company.
Unfortunately, the lies keep going and going. The lack of information that is shared by each manufacturer and the mistrust between them does not help. Each manufacturer is there to protect its processes and tech.
We need to act as one.
Because each manufacturer has their own little secrets, rather than fully share them with the YB… They let everyone hide instead of telling each supplier how the other may have gained a benefit in production for example.
This was a major concern for us. We had automated gluing lines while in China it was manual labour. We needed to cut labour costs in Canada so we innovated. We needed to cut costs in the areas that cost us the most. Yet in China with the manual labour, they cut costs on foam and polyester wadding for example.
Slowly the approvals of different grades of foam and lumber crept in and we all crept away from the holy grail of the YB specs.
No one cared until…
Europe, Poland to be exact was the hub of development at the time and so they were the ones dictating the specs. Unfortunately, metric nuts and bolts were slowly being implemented in North America and cost more. There were several instances like this when forcing one supplier to fall in line with another caused a huge price discrepancy. We had to order metric bolts from Europe, right there was a higher cost because of shipping.
No one cared about the specs until it cost more money. This is the reality for a global company that did open-book price comparisons between companies.
Ikea, Sweden, Swedish, home decor, retail, furniture, business, manufacturing, Ikea supplier,
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