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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

Ikea lost sales with me because of the "double find" requirement that you find what you are looking for when browsing in the display area, make a note of what it is, and then you have to find it again in the warehouse. I just gave up trying to find some items.

In addition they don't put all the same things in one place in either place. They get sprawled. The idea is probably to make you buy something you didn't think of when you came in. But armed with a list, it had the opposite effect on me, especially when kmart exists :-)

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It's a de-coupling device also. Like the same set of legs might go on 5 different pieces of furnature. You might have to stock legs in 5 locations. But having all the racks at the end means only 1 location to stock legs. Multiplied by every product in there it's a lot less logistics. Plus re-stocking is very easy.

My local IKEA (and others in Germany I've been to) has an inventory number on a tag of every item. Next to it is the shelf number and section within that shelf where I can find that particular item in the warehouse. IKEA also provides pencils and small pieces of paper with lists already printed on them to jot down any shelf + section + inventory numbers of stuff you want to grab.

Is it not like this in your local IKEAs?

For big things yes. For loose items, like bedding, nope.

Out here there are kiosks in the warehouse portion that will give you the location of all the big parts. Smaller stuff will typically be listed under e.g. "electronics", so in general I'd say if you know what you want you can skip looking twice. Additionally you can actually ask the staff. When I asked for the location of all the parts for a Malm bed the guy printed out a whole list of the required boxes and their respective locations.

Unfortunately there's no direct route between the entrance and the warehouse.

What do you mean KMart exists?

Australian KMart, most likely.

KMart is a good competitor to Ikea. At least in Australia.

This is confusing because Australian KMart and Target have nothing to do with American KMart and Target. Australian KMart is American Target, while American KMart traditionally looks like a bomb went off inside the store and nobody has bothered to clean it up yet.

Australian kmart is more walmart

And in the center there is the gun section.

What’s the alternative though? Many of the items are unwieldy. For the items that can be carried with you around the store, you pick them up off the shelf and take them to the checkout.

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