STOR, the store that tried to copy IKEA

Asymco's Horace Dediu and Dirk Schmidt, quoting Clayton Christensen: "The company has been slowly rolling its stores out across the world for [close to 50] years; and yet nobody has copied IKEA."

It's just a throwaway line in an excellent comparison of Apple and Ikea's retail operations, but does anyone remember Stor? From the NYT:

In April IKEA sued STOR, asserting that STOR copied some of IKEA's catalogue pages and its store design.
"The lawsuit is not about copying the concept - the similarity of the furniture is not an issue - but about infringing the copyright of the catalogue and copying the visual appearance of the store's setup and display, to the extent that the person familiar with IKEA thinks that STOR is IKEA," said Alan Zelnick, IKEA's lawyer.
IKEA also sought an injunction to prevent STOR from distributing its 1988 catalogue.

And the outcome, from Wikipedia:

STØR Furnishings International Inc. was an American furniture chain based in City of Industry, CA, that opened in 1987. It sold European-style furniture and ready-to-assemble furnishings. ... IKEA filed a lawsuit against the company shortly after opening, claiming copyright infringement, and was settled in 1988 with STØR being forced to change the layout of their stores and advertising. STØR was acquired by IKEA in 1992.

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The Snowden Principle

Rider

You can force a store to change it’s floor layout?
EH

Everyone makes fun of the PØpli kids, even I do.
sockdoll

Assimilate or exterminate.
http://twitter.com/chuckmonkey2010 Chuck

Someone should force IKEA to change it’s floor layout.
Anaerin

IKEA, successfully copying Habitat http://www.habitat.co.uk/ Which has been going since 1964
- retepslluerb
  
  I don’t get your point. IKEA was founded in 1943, the first catalogue is from 1951.
zaptrashmasher

I’m still using a cabinet I got from stor. It still lets off that new car’ish particle board off gassing smell. Whenever I get a whiff, it reminds me of the NES I used to keep inside–happy times.

Also, does anyone have any stor commercials? I’ve been trying to find them online but never have had any luck.
http://twitter.com/magicpeacelove PeaceLove

Ha ha! I still remember when STØR had a big, expensive billboard campaign announcing their opening in the LA area. They were a decidedly low-rent Ikea knockoff. When Ikea opened up a year or so later, they quickly crushed STØR.
- tieandjeans
  
  In Orange County, the IKEA actually took over STOR’s retail space. As an adult I can see that they both used a “furniture showroom on the top floor, warehouse and cheap stuff downstairs” layout, but as a kid they seemed incredibly distinct. IKEA was hyper-illuminated. STOR (without the E) was wood-paneled, dim, and had three stations with giant projector TVs connected to TG-16 and Genesis demo stations.
spiderking

In Vancouver, we have Möbler – right across the street from IKEA. They started out years ago trying to be a clone – catalogue shopping, flat-pack product, etc. – but ended up selling better-made modern furniture at higher prices. They’re doing OK – selling stuff to people who are ready for something a bit better than what they had in their dorm room.
- Daemonworks
  
  There’s also Jysk, a danish Ikea-equivalent, over by Coquitlam mall.
bloopeeriod

Because there is no US in Ikea
Daemonworks

I wish Ikea’s particle-board crap was more reasonably priced. That stuff disintigrates with ridiculous speed.
- Martijn Vos
  
  Not everything at IKEA is equally good or cheap. Some stuff is really good, some isn’t. Some is really cheap, some isn’t. So sometimes you end up with something that’s both good and cheap, sometimes it’s both bad and expensive.
  
  Sometimes they have exactly what you need, sometimes everything is exactly not what you’re looking for.
  - http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan
    
    Wow. So IKEA is just ‘life’? Cosmic!
penguinchris

I’m not sure what the point of copying Ikea would be. You couldn’t really undercut them, because they’re already so inexpensive, without severely impacting quality. The next step down price-wise is Wal-Mart and I’m sure they’ve got that market covered, along with the seedy discount furniture places in poorer communities.

You can compete on design, but Ikea has excellent design, so that would be tough. You probably couldn’t beat them on design while remaining competitive on price, because they have the advantage of large numbers.

It would be tough to compete with the “store experience” – the restaurants and the packaged foods are unique and quite good, there is just the right amount of random stuff besides furniture and housewares on the shelves to keep things interesting, the staff aren’t necessarily that knowledgable or helpful but they keep out of your way (no slimy salesmen), the return policy is good… what are you going to improve upon, really? I guess you could make the checkout lines shorter?

I’m not saying you couldn’t possibly compete with them – but to realistically compete with them you couldn’t just copy. And you’d pretty much have to aim at a slightly pricier market between Ikea and the “high-end” furniture places, with design that is competitive with Ikea and which blows away the mediocrity of the “high-end” places (I don’t mean actual high-end furniture). I guess this is what @boingboing-ec9211f13ea4f9ad0e58be1eef8fe2d4:disqus is describing with Möbler though I don’t know how good their design is.

Even then, Ikea isn’t just cheap stuff – they have cheap, mid-range, and even fairly high-end versions of many products.
- http://glitch.tl/ Michael Smith
  
  The only avenue might be to get ahead of Ikea and open stores where they have not yet opened. This seems to be exactly what STOR did.
autark

Hah, I’m learning Norwegian right now, and STØR means “big”… Swedish is pretty similar so I wouldn’t be surprised if it has the same meaning. So, kinda funny double meaning w/”Store”
- http://twitter.com/kentlordx kent høgseth
  
  More homework for you! Stør is a fish:
  http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alminnelig_st%C3%B8r
  
  Stor means big. Most get those pesky ekstra æøå letters correct.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Escobedo/1043685245 Tim Escobedo
  
  STØR used a kind of fake generic European language as part of their advertising. I remember their radio advertising featuring some amusing Euro-speak English that kind of sounded like those PronunciationManual videos.
http://twitter.com/dsrg Anders Ekbom

There’s also 11 Furniture, a Chinese furniture retailer, which at least here in Sweden ( http://translate.google.se/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dn.se%2Fekonomi%2Fikeakopia-upptackt-i-kina ) was reported as having copied IKEA’s general lookandfeel.
PNWchemist

I’m craving ikea meatballs now. damn it.
onepieceman

Why would anyone want more IKEA style shops? If they’ve patented the concept of hiding the exit doors and forcing you to move through the entire store like a cow on its way to the slaughterhouse, then good! That means all I have to do is avoid IKEA and I can be safe in the knowledge nobody else will play the same trick on me. A rare example of the patent system working for the benefit of the consumer.
- twianto
  
  Dunno, seems to work for IKEA, plenty of supermarkets around here copy the concept. I hate it though and often enter through the exit if I need something that’s near the end of that nightmarish maze.
  - http://twitter.com/opticalens Mike Perkowitz
    
    They do have shortcuts, and fairly frequent map displays. It’s not that hard to skip large parts of the maze.
Michael A

ikea protip: if you have android, the internal floor layout of their stores shows up on google maps! with sections/bathrooms/cafe all labelled. it even has a map of the showroom.