The Battle of Edmonton Ikea

[T_i_B]

One of those stories that really does make you wonder what the world is coming too. Particualrly since this is Ikea we are talking about here.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=609933

For 12 hours, Karyn Christian was among those who waited patiently at the head of the queue outside Ikea's new store in north London on Wednesday, ready to snap up the amazing offers when the doors opened at midnight.

With prices as low as £45 for a three-seater leather sofa and £30 for a double-bed frame, the bargains seemed too good to miss. Unfortunately, some 6,000 other people felt the same way.

When midnight arrived, the crowd stormed the doors and pandemonium reigned among those who managed to get inside, with tempers flaring, threats being exchanged and punches being thrown. The store had to close after unprecedented scenes which left 20 people being treated for heat exhaustion and about half a dozen needing treatment in hospital for minor injuries.

Ms Christian, 38, a civil servant, said: "There were people who each had one end of a sofa and were pulling in different directions, both shouting, 'It's mine.' Some were lying on sofas that people were trying to take away. It was total chaos. In fact, chaos was an understatement. I've never seen anything like it in my life.''

[ClintonTyree]

1. Unbridled consumerism.......isn't capitalism great?

Companies that open new stores in this fashion know exactly what the result will be. They expect something like this to happen and promote it, knowing full well that they'll get tons of free publicity from it. All for greed, all for money. People and their health are the lowest factors in the equation. Jackasses all.

[KarenS]

3. hmmmm,,,, I hadn't thought of it that way,,,,

The Store/Company itself does encourage this with advertising, etc,,,, same with the 'day after' sales,,,, it is sick & sad.

[Telly Savalas]

5. Too lazy to look up the link...

but an article I read about this stated that IKEA has opened 12 other stores in the UK with similar promotions without incident.

Should companies not put items on sale for fear of riots by shopping yobs?

[Nihil]

7. Disagree

Although I don't make a habit of defending large companies, in this
case I really don't think Ikea are to blame. As other replies have
stated, they have opened plenty of other shops in this way without
trouble so why pick on them for this farce?

The problem is with the morons who believe that the defining point of
"success" is to get a bargain ... queueing for hours to buy a sofa?
Then going ape because there are other, equally sad, deficient morons
who are competing for the same (mass-produced) item?

FFS, get a life people!

Not sapient any more, just breeding generations of brain-dead consumers.

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Because they put out huge amounts of advance publicity for this one

I live in a different TV area (it would take me 2 hours to drive to that store, even if the roads were empty), but I saw adverts telling me it was going to open. After their experience in Saudi Arabia, you'd have thought they would cut back on the grand openings with limited stocks of extremely cheap goods.

[KarenS]

2. goodgrief,,,,

People can be really weird & greedy,,,,

I visited a IKEA for the first time in December (while I was visiting in the Phoenix area),,,, it's a cool store,,,,, but when (if) they every decide to build one in Denver, I certainly will not be lined up to participate in the Grand Opening!!!!

[non sociopath skin]

4. Well, that's yer Norf Landan for yer, ennit, John????

Knock it on the 'ead, myte!

The Skin

[T_i_B]

6. Not just North London

Now whilst we do have the following quote in the article

David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, said: "Ikea must have known that opening the store next to the second most deprived constituency in London people would flock to their store in large numbers. They did not put in place the right infrastructure to deal with that."

This is not something that I can subscribe to from what I have seen. For one thing I have seen lots of advertising for this store opening on TV and on posters on the way to work here in Essex, and for another thing people from some distance away keep figuring in the reports of this pallaver. From the article...

"It was dog eat dog up on the roundabout," said Carole Forster, 56, from Norfolk.

Emma Wilson, 18, from Essex, said the crowd "charged towards the entrance".

Merrison Gittens, 48, from Luton, said the situation got out of control when an Ikea employee told crowds in the car park they had "no hope" of getting a sofa.

Now if North London poverty is the fault, why are all the eyewitness accounts in the papers tending to come from people from the home counties?