I'd happily pay for the traditional physical IKEA yearly catalog. I suspect that if they sold it in-store for a few euros (€2?) just to cover printing costs, many people would buy it. It's more than a product list, it’s a cultural artifact, offering a window into the aesthetics, values, and lifestyle of its time. I still keep their old catalogs, and I’m not alone.
Fun fact - Getty Images used to send physical albums of their stock photo collections.
It was some 25 years ago, I was doing freelance for an ad agency, and while visiting the office and waiting for my appointment to finalize some paperwork I was browsing through these. When my guy finally showed up to pick me up he asked if I liked them and said - you can get these for free, just write them. So I did and they mailed me 10kg worth of albums. Just like that.
Just a cool memory from the past. Back then internet wasn't that rich, mobile phones were novelty, and when you visited a musuem or gallery and liked you bought a massive album to hold on to your memories.
These days, when visiting such places (think sistine chapel) I don't even bother to do pictures at all. If I want to recall something I can find endless stream of top quality pictures made by professionals with equipment worth as much as my car and in clinical settings, with no crowds and perfect lighting.
Not saying this is you, but I’m reminded of a story of a woman who took a ton of photos of vacations - all the sights. But upon the death of her husband realized she never captured the people with her
My university had bound catalogues of “letterpress blocks” you could order for letterpresses.
These were from about 50-100 years ago, and were great for scanning in and converting to vector art as various design elements. Usually these were artistic flourishes to include inline with text.
The one that stands out for me was engraved drawing of a fish that would not be out of place as a large print.
I mean obviously the color space of most images you find online is still RGB although that is slowly changing, but until it changes print versions will probably be higher quality.
The colors afforded by your phone or camera probably have richer colors than is afforded by images you download of the place online, but may also be dependent on what you're doing and your camera settings.
I've known about Ikea for just one-third of my life. It's only last few years that it has been in the country of my origin and only this year in my home city. I love the repository of design, aesthetics, technology, advertising, and sociology these catalogs can be. I'm sure you could write a book "titled design through the decades from an ikea lens".
It was one if not the most effective advertisement which I’ve encountered in my life. We got it freely every year with post, and I dreamed as a kid to have such houses and flats which could be seen in them. The brand stuck me so well, that it’s my go to furniture store, since I moved out from my parents. I wanted to read it again last year to have some ideas for my new flat, and I was devastated when I’ve figured out that it’s not printed anymore. Even as I’ve been continuously online for 24-25 years, a digital “version” of it will never be the same. I won’t ever read it just for fun, which we did back then so many times (my whole family), that it became utterly damaged until the next year’s edition came. I would easily pay for it.
I remember paging through the IKEA catalog and OTTO clothing catalog at my grandparents house in the summer. We were bored. I think this is just nostalgia. Today even if there was a print version, it wouldn't mean the same to people as it did back then. There's so much more stuff competing for your attention online all the time.
Not just online. My nieces have at least 100x more physical toys than we had with my brother. I saw similar things with all of my friends with kids. Way more toys. Even in those families who are strongly anti consumerists.
You could buy something via mail or phone, but there were also shops: you would go there, fill out a form with tiny pencils (like an old school bank form), give it to the clerk, and they'd bring it to the cashier 'from the back'.
I remember holiday catalogues the same. Then the internet came, and I assumed it would make the whole process of choosing a holiday that bit more magical
Instead we got really efficient price comparison and sometimes very useful but often gamed customer reviews...
> And behind the scenes, work on the next catalogue had already begun – a process lasting several months and involving planning, construction of interiors, photography and filming, all led by catalogue manager Mia Olsson Tunér.
It is naive to assume printing costs are the only costs involved.
I feel comfortable assuming IKEA had a better understanding of the economic fundamentals of the catalogue than HN commenters.
No one is assuming printing costs are the only costs to produce the catalogue. The point of pricing the catalogue at printing costs is to cover the marginal cost of offering the catalogue for sale. The fixed costs of producing the calendar are incurred either way.
A company I worked for stopped doing physical catalogs too - after having done so for a very long time. The cost to produce the catalog was insane, and had quite a bit of dedicated staff working on it full-time. Making a catalog is a specialized skillset, and has little overlap with the business' core competencies, such as website administration.
Over time, the revenue attributed with the physical catalog declined year over year. People said they wanted the catalog, but it didn't translate into attributable sales. The ones that did order from the catalog were often the smallest, insignificant orders the company took in. The website and online advertising are where customers gravitated towards, and remain today.
The amount of people that actually want a physical catalog, even for IKEA, I would wager pales in comparison to the amonut of people that want to browse the catalog on their phone or tablet. Pricing changes, stock comes and goes, products get discontinued, colors/materials are changed, etc. The website is always up-to-date, the physical catalog... is not.
When I read comments like yours, I interpret them as people wanting nastolgic items more than marketing materials or ordering guides. The costs for the company are just too high to produce those anymore; well over $2 per catalog someone up-thread mentioned - we're talking more like $10-$20+ these days (not accounting for anything except print costs) for a full-color, glossy/professional catalog with hundreds of pages.
I have serious doubts IKEA printing catalogs today would garner any new business. They would give away (or perhaps sell) some copies to existing, long-time customers with a fond memory of the brand and their catalogs - and I'm afraid that's it.
I suppose on the plus side, my mailbox doesn't get completely stuffed with catalogs before Christmas every year. That aside, I do sort of miss leafing through all the catalogs I used to get.
Same way as IKEA restaurants were serving decent quality food for dimes.
It was business decision. People were thinking - we have a day off, we could go there and there, do some shopping, and then we go there for food, or we could go to the IKEA and eat there.
If you're "slave to the IKEA" and want to cherish your free day with consumerism, it was a no brainer if you wanted to shop on a budget and eat for free.
Unforntuantely, catalogues are gone and so are days of cheap food in IKEA.
There are other stuff that goes into it. But they still do nearly all of that for the web site, so a print catalogue in addition wouldn't be such a massive undertaking.
The problem really is the distribution costs, it used to be delivered to every home in Sweden, doing it on that scale is expensive. If they were satisfied with doing a print catalogue for the biggest fans, it would be an insignificant cost.
