IKEA Day

The worlds northernmost and "most international" IKEA has opened in Haparanda yesterday. If they could, they would have proclaimed yesterday IKEA day and made it a holiday.

The plans to build an IKEA in the north have been around for 15 years. Haparanda lies on the border with the twin town of Torneå (Tornio), and is near to Norway and Russia - the Barents Sea Region. Customers are expected (and have come) from all four countries. The closest one in Russia is 12 hours away in Murmansk, and apparently it has the same caché as Chanel. So there is a lot of talk about changing the customs regulations into Russia - almost setting up a separate line at the border for IKEA customers - that's how much clout IKEA has up here. Currently Russians can take back only 35kg through customs, and a full kitchen weighs a bit more than that.

It is Sweden's 16th IKEA, and now the closest one to Luleå (130 km away, compared to 500 km previously). Plans for one in the north have been around for 15 years, and Luleå was in contention for a time, but didn’t fight hard enough (or give enough tax breaks or whatever) to make it happen. Most people here think losing it was a big mistake: the arrival of IKEA in Haparanda has basically saved the town from despair and ruin. The whole town has been renewed, with 1500 jobs created, house prices up, huge drop in the numbers of youth leaving the town to opportunities in the south, and hundreds if not thousands more jobs are expected to be created over the next 5-10 years. A 250 room hotel is in the works, along with an Aurora shopping plaza with 50 stores, and hundreds of new apartments ... all this in a town of not even 11,000 people. (The map above, if you enlarge it, shows that there are 470,000 people within a 150km radius of it, and 70,000 within 30km. Luleå is located where the industry SSAB is located).

The day's newspaper has just been delivered, and the official figure for the opending day was 10,371. Now the official population of Haparanda is about 10,800. 150 people or so work there, so that leaves 280 people, minus police, fire, taxis etc, say 200 people who were too damned lazy to go and support their town, and whole region, and shop at IKEA.

The founder of IKEA Ingvar Kamprad is the worlds 4th richest man, and still a humble old gent who rides the bus, flies economy, and generally shuns publicity. He was born in Småland, traditionally one of the the poorest parts of Sweden where the Smålanders are known for being 'Scottish' with their money. His dyslexia forced him to give the stock Swedish names to make it easier for him to remember.

He was at this opening, where he declared his love for the Haparanda councilman he worked with to bring this all about, seriously, describing their relationship as kär, and this personal compatibility was one of the major reasons building their, despite all the economists advice that it won't make money. But Ingvar purposefully wanted to support a struggling area and prevent the flood of youth from leaving, and is donating 1M kronor (~185,000 AUD) a year to support activities promoting the region, and several other companies are also putting some money for the same purpose.

So there you go. The world's richest man has done it again, and now even the polar bear hunters on Svalbard can come and get a Billy bookshelf for their igloos...