Buy now, keep forever

Marketing campaigns don’t often grab me. They are often expensive, over-produced and missing the point but occasionally I see something that stands out for its simplicity to get to the heart of why someone would buy a product and says it so succinctly, I had to stop and snap a photo.

Whether I would drop £180 for a stool is one thing, but I often find people buy products on how they look and what they cost rather than heritage and quality. The Aalto stool 60 might be a tremendously more expensive than the IKEA copy but if style is all that is copied, what purpose does it serve? I guess that what it does do is bring a design that is out of the reach for many to a price point that they can afford, although along the way it devalues the original product and those that could afford it no longer see the reason to.

This is a problem that faces most furniture manufacturers making products that will last from materials that are ethically sourced and made by people that are appropriately rewarded. IKEA have made statements previously that they cannot guarantee that the wood they use has been sourced from legal forestries. I can’t comprehend how a company with so many unethical policies can have such a reach amongst us. It is about time that the original sources stood up and made a strong statement.

Buy now, keep forever. Could you say that about a purchase from IKEA?