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Short sofas . . . naming fights . . . 'Rocket Unit'
2004-11-11 00:00 When a shopper knits an "Ikea" scarf while she camps outside the store a day and a half before it opens, the company must be doing something right. But the fact is, the Swedish home furnishings retailer had a little trouble adapting its products to American consumers when it opened its first U.S. store 20 years ago in the Philadelphia area. "The sofas were too small," said Pernille Spiers-Lopez, 45, president of Ikea North America.Too-short sofas were just the most obvious problem. The company's products were measured by the metric system used all over Europe, which American consumers didn't understand. The retailer also struggled to get the right suppliers and product assortment. "We have worked very hard on getting stores to click with the U.S. market," Spiers-Lopez said Wednesday outside the noisy scene that was the Ikea parking lot in Tempe. "It has taken us this long to get it right." They may now be described in FFU in the US market, but
they are still made to metric dimensions.
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