Humans of Earth, I give you: IKEA and Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Some things are just meant to go together\u2013so obviously so that once they\u2019re joined, it\u2019s hard to imagine a time before. I\u2019m thinking here of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant<\/a>. Cheap wine and bad decisions. Avocado and toast. My wife and me<\/a> (Awwww<\/em>\u2026<\/em>). Now: BILLY bookcases and free two-day delivery<\/a>.<\/p>\n Before we get ahead of ourselves, this isn\u2019t official yet (although you can suddenly find a bunch of IKEA products on Amazon\u2019s site<\/a>). Moreover, the Swedish company is being a bit coy (as we\u2019ll see below).<\/p>\n But IKEA\u2019s chief executive told Reuters recently<\/a> that after his company spent the first few decades of the Internet walled off in brick-and-mortar stores and on its own website, IKEA has now realized that \u201con digital platforms \u2026 the competitive landscape is changing.\u201d<\/p>\n And c\u2019mon, we know what that almost certainly means, right? It means that in the near future, when you ask Alexa for Swedish meatballs<\/a>, she (sorry, it) will know exactly what you want.<\/p>\n A bit of background. IKEA, as you know, is the Swedish furniture brand Americans both love, and love to hate.<\/p>\n Downsides:<\/p>\n Set aside the instructions; we can\u2019t help you there. But while IKEA\u2019s current website looks like someone took a paper catalog and tried to squish it onto a screen, there may soon be help for people who would rather shop online.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where we get to the coy part. Because even though you\u2019d probably think this likely means IKEA is coming to Amazon, and just about everyone else probably also thinks this means Amazon, IKEA isn\u2019t actually saying \u201cAmazon.\u201d<\/p>\n Not yet, anyway. One might expect there could be some f\u00f6rhandlingar<\/a> to take place first.<\/p>\n \u201cI leave unsaid on which (platforms),\u201d Inter IKEA Group Chief Executive Torbjorn Loof told Reuters, \u201cbut we will test and pilot, to see \u2018what does this mean, what does digital shopping look like in future and what do digital shopping centers mean?’\u201d<\/p>\n Way back in the beginning of the Internet, people like me remember the original Pets.com, which was an online pet store (of course) that sold giant bags of dog food and cat litter\u2013and promised free shipping on every order<\/a>. In retrospect, this was kind of an insane business model, and it explains why IKEA might have a real issue in moving to a place like Amazon.<\/p>\n Part of the allure of Amazon\u2013and smaller competitors, like Jet and Walmart\u2019s digital store\u2013is that the cost of shipping often winds up folded into the shopping cart. It\u2019s not exactly free shipping; you already paid for Amazon Prime, for example. But it does look like it to most people who don\u2019t read find print.<\/p>\n So can IKEA sell its products on third-party sites, without undercutting its direct digital and in-store sales\u2013and on terms that could even make it eligible for programs like Amazon Prime?<\/p>\n I\u2019m not sure how it will work. But if sellers can figure out how to ship a 300-pound Olympic barbell set<\/a> for free, you\u2019d have to imagine there\u2019s a way to send an eight-pound LACK table<\/a> without breaking the bank. We\u2019ll all find out for sure next year, according to the Reuters interview\u2013this all starts in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Humans of Earth, I give you: IKEA and Amazon. Some things are just meant to go together\u2013so obviously so that once they\u2019re joined, it\u2019s hard to imagine a time before. I\u2019m thinking here of Steph Curry and Kevin Durant. Cheap wine and bad decisions. Avocado and toast. My wife and me (Awwww\u2026). Now: BILLY bookcases […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Amazon, oh will it be Amazon?<\/h2>\n
\n
And if it\u2019s Amazon, will it be Prime?<\/h2>\n