ikea sale revisited
July 22nd, 2005 by boon
I was in bed at 7am this last Friday, so we missed the opening of the IKEA annual sale this year. The excitement has kind of numbed over the months since the last IKEA sale (the first ever since they moved into their monstrous hangar-like building). But we are moving into our new place in October, and we needed furniture. No, we were waiting for an IKEA annual sale. In effect, we got there 30 minutes after the doors opened. And the crowd was not too big, like on a Saturday morning. Nice.
I was half asleep. Couldn’t even manage a smile for the attendants handing out shopping bags and those tiny pencils. We had to make it in and out of there in 2 hours, because my boss hinted that I couldn’t take leave. Oh well… that’s okay, because frequent visits to IKEA has caused us to memorize the shortcuts, sections and *some* pronuncable Swedish words. We even factored in the 15 minute wait for the payment queue.
Obviously, not everything was on sale. The white LACK shelves weren’t on sale. The EXPEDIT bookcases weren’t on sale. The MAGNESIUM track lights weren’t on sale. No HEMNES mirrors on sale. These were on my wish list.
Funny thing was that by the time we were out of there, we were about RM250 poorer, and that’s after using the RM200 gift voucher Warren and Jason gave to us as a wedding gift.
Lee Lian got some christmas gifts. I bought some rope lighting. We got the LEKSVIK coffee table that was on member’s special (that took up most of the bill). Mom-in-law wanted some plant pots. And all the stuff we bought was on sale.
Anyway, IKEA was giving away free prizes for folks who spent RM250 or more on a single receipt. Lee Lian managed to win a LACK shelf, which IKEA is somehow trying to get rid of by the truckloads. They even equipped their staff with hailers, standing on stacks and stacks of LACK shelves, trying to get people to buy them at RM45 a pop (birch veneer only).
To add to the insanity, we went back again on Saturday to finish up where we left off, and bought some lamps and and a mobile document cabinet. However, we got a pair of green slippers instead of a LACK shelf, this time.
We called it quits after that.