Retail empires, like the political and military kind, are tragedies. They grow from modest beginnings, pushing all others aside until they reach their apogee when all competitors seem to have been vanquished. Then they collapse from within. The only difference is that instead of leaving us magnificent cathedrals and palaces they leave us enormous tin sheds. For the past 20 years Ikea has carried all before it. Positioning itself as a mass-market Habitat, at MFI prices, it has all but extinguished the market for traditional furnishings and antiques, which now are sold for peanuts by increasingly desperate auctioneers. In 2005, 4000 people turned up when the Swedish chain opened its new store in Edmonton. Police were called and one man stabbed, so desperate were the residents of North London to get their paws on the latest incarnation of Billy the Bookcase.
The thought that Ikea may have left its Augustus period behind, though, occurred to me when I heard its head of sustainability, Steve Howard, tell a Guardian conference today that the world has reached ‘peak home furnishings’.
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