Ikea Refugee Shelter Entering Production

jones_supa writes: Ikea's line of flatpack refugee shelters are going into production, the Swedish furniture maker announced this week. The lightweight Better Shelter was developed under a partnership between the Ikea Foundation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and beta tested among refugee families in Ethiopia, Iraq, and Lebanon. Each unit takes about four hours to assemble and is designed to last for three years — far longer than conventional refugee shelters, which typically last about six months. The product is an important tool in the prolonged refugee crisis that has unfolded across the Middle East. The war in Syria has spurred nearly 4 million people to leave their homes. The UNHCR has agreed to buy 10,000 of the shelters, and will begin providing them to refugee families this summer.

Comments

Part of a more insidious plan...

[hilather]

To sell Allen keys at premium at refugee sites.

Well what do you know

[Anonymous Coward]

From time to time IKEA actually has to do something to earn that tax-free charity status.

Ikea good points

[Livius]

Ikea is not the best corporate citizen, nor do they have the best quality or the best prices.

But their stuff is clever. I like clever. Why can't other manufacturers think ahead and from the customer's perspective like that?

Re:Ikea good points

[JaredOfEuropa]

You don't need to have the best quality or be the cheapest, even from a customer perspective. As long as you offer the best value for money. Ikea does pretty good there as long as you know what to buy there and what to avoid. And don;t forget to put a price on convenience: instead of waiting 4-8 weeks for your new stuff, you get to take it home and use it right away (some assembly required). That's very useful... we use Ikea all the time in rental properties that need to be furnished on short notice.

Re:Ikea good points

[tlhIngan]

You don't need to have the best quality or be the cheapest, even from a customer perspective. As long as you offer the best value for money. Ikea does pretty good there as long as you know what to buy there and what to avoid.

Exactly. Though, I've done other flat packs and by far Ikea is the best. Their furniture might not be the cheapest, last the longest or be the best, but if you're talking flat pack, they are. And yeah, you could get better, but they're usually something that's pre-built and you have to move it as-is. At least flat pack you can break down into sub assemblies that are 100 times easier to move.

And it's incredible - the non-Ikea flatpacks I had were just awful - the holes would NEVER align, they were usually the wrong size for the dowels (too big or small) and when you're done it either was wobbly (see holes), or the entire panel was misaligned and thus you had gaps. It's as if they laid it out in a computer and never bothered trying to assemble it. Or even just seeing if comes close to resembling what it was supposed to be.

It's not like Ikea uses better materials - they pioneered the use of particle board, but that desk... it fell apart in short order. I've got Ikea stuff bought at the same time that's still around made from particle board.

No, putting IKEA stuff together is fun. I've never understood that complaint, and I'd guess that many of the people repeating the meme have never bought anything from IKEA.

I've usually enjoyed it - it's a good puzzle. And you have to admit that the instructions are designed to not use words (which have to be translated) and try to be as neutral as possible while still explaining what to do in across cultures, languages and history. Whoever draws those instructions might actually have insights into the human race.

About the only time I don't like them is when they don't clearly illustrate which way a piece goes around. For the spatially challenged, this can mean they put it all together only to have the wood exposed instead of veneer.

You'd think maybe a red X on the part that's going to end up in a hidden location, followed through with the illustrated X would help identifying which way it goes.

Long lasting

[taylorius]

"Designed to last for 3 years". Impressive, that's about a year longer than their normal furniture.

Re:Long lasting

[ColdWetDog]

It's all designed for European and Asian body-weights. Put that stuff to regular wear in the U.S and it's gonna buckle under the weight quicker, that's just how it is. But I agree they could put some more thought into the products they sell over in the U.S.

I am unaware of the UNHCR dealing with American refuges. I'm sometimes a little out of the loop but I thought I would have heard of that by now. Is it that bad in Texas these days?

Re:Ikea

[E-Rock]

No, putting IKEA stuff together is fun. I've never understood that complaint, and I'd guess that many of the people repeating the meme have never bought anything from IKEA.

Re:Ikea

[Tom]

That's a meme, but also a lie. As IT people especially, we can take a big hint from IKEA in this regards. Their documentation is short, mostly visual, always step-by-step and gives the user exactly the information he needs, with none of the unimportant blabla that many blow up many other documentations from the necessary 3 pages to the actual 30.

If the instructions for Windows were made by IKEA, thousands of IT support people would be out of jobs because users could actually do simple tasks by themselves.