The Truth about IKEA
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Review
'Stung.' Financial Times
'Merciless... the wholesome Scandinavian image of furniture and lifestyle giant Ikea has been rudely shaken.' Independent
'[A] shocking tell-all book - Johan Stenebo was the closest collaborator of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad.' Der Spiegel online
'A long overdue expose - sensational.' Goteborgs Posten --1
'Merciless... the wholesome Scandinavian image of furniture and lifestyle giant Ikea has been rudely shaken.' Independent
'[A] shocking tell-all book - Johan Stenebo was the closest collaborator of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad.' Der Spiegel online
'A long overdue expose - sensational.' Goteborgs Posten --1
Product Description
Johan Stenebo was for 20 years one of the leading directors of IKEA while it turned itself into the world's largest flatpack furniture retailer with 700 million visitors a year. During these years, he was the personal assistant to Ingvar Kamprad, the billionaire founder and owner of IKEA, set up its Leeds store that broke profit records, was global director of key furniture areas, and latterly CEO of investment company IKEA Greentech. In this authoritative book, he writes frankly about Kamprad's inspirational leadership of the company built in his image from a provincial store in Sweden, as well as Kamprad's Nazi links, IKEA's amazingly low wage bill, exceptional profits, complex Stasi-like business culture with spies, and resourceful ways of using the media and companies like Greenpeace and WWF to cover environmental issues. No company director has ever written a more open book about the company's extraordinary success and failures (and he is likely the last).
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I asked for this book for Christmas after hearing an interview with the author. He sounded fluent and cogent. I looked forward to getting to grips with the reasons for the successes and failures of a business that I have always found fascinating.
Unfortunately, Johan Stenebo's book is anything but fluent and cogent and is more of a series of disjointed comments about IKEA with no narrative flow. Stories about people, places and activities tumble past the reader without any apparent overall structure. This might have been forgivable if all the disjointed content itself had been worthwhile. Instead, I regularly reached the end of a section finding myself wondering what point Mr. Stenebo had been trying to make. Quite often an irrelevant anecdote with no conclusion or lesson just peters out without any meaning being apparent. This book badly needed a good editor to force some structure into it.
The readability of the book is also hampered badly by the awful translation that led me to have to read some passages several times before the meaning became clear. Sometimes it never did become clear. Here's a sentence picked at random (not the worst by far): "A checkout with over-staffing, an uncontrollable flow of goods that is doing nothing but cluttering the shelves in the warehouse or badly planned delivery of goods, sometimes too few things sometimes too many, cost large sums of money." His meaning is hidden in there but you have to tease it out for yourself.
The sad thing is that there is some quality content in this book (hence the second star). If this content had been presented via good editing and good translation it could have made this a worthwhile read. Instead, reading it has been an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience.
Unfortunately, Johan Stenebo's book is anything but fluent and cogent and is more of a series of disjointed comments about IKEA with no narrative flow. Stories about people, places and activities tumble past the reader without any apparent overall structure. This might have been forgivable if all the disjointed content itself had been worthwhile. Instead, I regularly reached the end of a section finding myself wondering what point Mr. Stenebo had been trying to make. Quite often an irrelevant anecdote with no conclusion or lesson just peters out without any meaning being apparent. This book badly needed a good editor to force some structure into it.
The readability of the book is also hampered badly by the awful translation that led me to have to read some passages several times before the meaning became clear. Sometimes it never did become clear. Here's a sentence picked at random (not the worst by far): "A checkout with over-staffing, an uncontrollable flow of goods that is doing nothing but cluttering the shelves in the warehouse or badly planned delivery of goods, sometimes too few things sometimes too many, cost large sums of money." His meaning is hidden in there but you have to tease it out for yourself.
The sad thing is that there is some quality content in this book (hence the second star). If this content had been presented via good editing and good translation it could have made this a worthwhile read. Instead, reading it has been an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Like some of the other reviewers, I bought this on the strength of some promotional newspaper excerpts and as a customer of a relatively unique business. What a waste of time and money.
Poorly structured and translated, I have no idea what the writer's overall point is. What is clear to me is that the writer seems to think that some pretty basic business and retail ideas (on volume, pricing, sourcing and logistics, for example) used in businesses throughout the world were invented at Ikea. Is Ikea the only place that he has worked I wonder ?
This is the first Amazon review that I committed the time to writing, motivated by the fact that this is simply the worst written book, with the weakest content, that I have ever read. If, like me, you are of the 'I've started, so I'll finish' persuasion when it comes to books, then just don't buy it. The disappointment of the turgid early chapters does not improve.
Poorly structured and translated, I have no idea what the writer's overall point is. What is clear to me is that the writer seems to think that some pretty basic business and retail ideas (on volume, pricing, sourcing and logistics, for example) used in businesses throughout the world were invented at Ikea. Is Ikea the only place that he has worked I wonder ?
This is the first Amazon review that I committed the time to writing, motivated by the fact that this is simply the worst written book, with the weakest content, that I have ever read. If, like me, you are of the 'I've started, so I'll finish' persuasion when it comes to books, then just don't buy it. The disappointment of the turgid early chapters does not improve.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The truth is out there, but this is not it. I had high hopes when I heard about this book and read the reviews in the papers. It has failed on almost all accounts.
I was hoping to read about some large scandals or something of actual interest instead this book is a rather petty affair more interested in trying to paint IKEA and certain individuals within IKEA management as sexist, racist or incompetent.
It is disjointed and badly translated from Swedish. It contains far too many errors and nonsensical sentences for a published book and as a result it is a frustrating read. Did no one proof read it?
The author comes with zero evidence for his statements about IKEA and instead relies on anecdotes such as `I heard that Y said something not very nice about X according to B'. This is not the truth, this is conjecture.
The only redeeming part of this book was the last chapter (hence my 2 stars rather than just 1) which speaks about IKEA and their sustainably and social policies. I found his opinion on the subjects both interesting and thought provoking as I am a big sceptic of companies who claim green credentials for cost cutting measures.
If you seriously have an interest in IKEA as a company then this book might be worth a read, but don't expect it to be a good read. Get the library to get you a copy rather than waste your money on it.
I was hoping to read about some large scandals or something of actual interest instead this book is a rather petty affair more interested in trying to paint IKEA and certain individuals within IKEA management as sexist, racist or incompetent.
It is disjointed and badly translated from Swedish. It contains far too many errors and nonsensical sentences for a published book and as a result it is a frustrating read. Did no one proof read it?
The author comes with zero evidence for his statements about IKEA and instead relies on anecdotes such as `I heard that Y said something not very nice about X according to B'. This is not the truth, this is conjecture.
The only redeeming part of this book was the last chapter (hence my 2 stars rather than just 1) which speaks about IKEA and their sustainably and social policies. I found his opinion on the subjects both interesting and thought provoking as I am a big sceptic of companies who claim green credentials for cost cutting measures.
If you seriously have an interest in IKEA as a company then this book might be worth a read, but don't expect it to be a good read. Get the library to get you a copy rather than waste your money on it.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great and true
The book describes IKEA from within and does it convincingly. The defamation of Mr Kamprad i had excpected was absent, which only made the story ring even truer. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Stephen S
Very entertaining
A very entertaining read about the king of cheap IKEA and how they squeeze money out of our pockets. Read more
Published 18 months ago by Ian Chapman
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