IK(D)EA

I just got back from IKEA and I HAD to post this:



OK call me suaku, but I never noticed it before! (Bearing in mind that this was only my 2nd visit EVER to IKEA Tampines.)
What a brilliant idea! On top of the usual hadicapped parking spaces, this IKEA store had reserved parking lots for families with young babies/kids travelling with a pram. WOW COOL! I wonder if this is also done elsewhere in the world. Does anyone know?

Hmmm....I'm not a Mum yet but already thinking like one...oh dear. Any Mum with a young child will tell you, (and I've seen this happen with my friends) that most parking lots in Singapore are tightly crammed so close to one another that you barely have space to open the door wide enough to put in the baby car seat or pram. The worst of these being the carpark at ISETAN SCOTTS. (My Dad says the people who design carparks in Singapore obviously don't drive cos they don't know how wide the average car is!!)

Usually parents have to drive the car out of the lot to be able to open the doors wide enough to load it with those things. Another great thing which surprised me was that parking was FREE. You'll be hard pressed to find FREE parking 7 days a week at any other commerical location in Singapore. (Even the IKEA outlet in Alexandra Road charges for parking.) Probably because this IKEA outlet in Tampines was located in the middle of nowhere, together with Giant and Courts.

So WELL DONE IKEA! I think more malls should have such family-friendly lots. Another discovery at IKEA today - They've stopped giving out free plastic bags! Many customers didn't know this and were complaining at the till, but in France however, I discovered that this practice was very common in many supermarket chains. You just have to bring your own bag to carry your groceries home. Which is how I ended up with diswashing liquid, pesto sauce and a can of beans in my handbag one day....I didn't know they didn't give plastic bags!!!

(French women, being ever so chic of course, have these cool, hip-looking large trolley bags with wheels which they use for all their grocery shopping. No, these are not the frumpy, ugly type you see homeless people or rickety old grannies wheel about in movies. These French women had trolley bags which looked STYLISH. The nicest ones I've seen look like a cross between a Hermes Birkin bag and expensive wallpaper.)

Anyways, back to IKEA and their new NO PLASTIC BAGS policy. I'm all for it because I think we use WAY too many plastic bags here in Singapore. But I just don't think IKEA has put enough thought into their new policy. First of all, most of the customers I saw were caught by surprise and were unhappy. IKEA could have posted these signs about their new policy at the entrance and throughout the store or even take out a print ad in the main daily broadsheet, Straits Times. (I dunno if they did cos I've been away, but judging by the reactions, not many customers knew about the new "no plastic bag" policy.)

Secondly, plastic bags WERE still available, and at a mere 10 cents for the regular-sized bag, and 20 cents (I think, or 50 cents) for the extra large one. Most of the people I saw paid for the plastic bags anyway. What is 10 cents to the average Singaporean shopper? Which makes me question IKEA's motives. They are STILL handing out as many plastic bags cos people are buying them. How does this help the environment? Just that now, they're collecting revenue from the sale of what used to be free bags. There was also a sturdier re-useable plastic carrier on sale for $1.20. But NO ONE I saw bought that.

What IKEA could do, is to TOTALLY do away with the thin plastic bags (not even sell them for 50 cents each) and just have the sturdy re-useable carrier available for say, $4-$5. I believe that way, more people will remember to bring their own bag every time they shop there cos it costs much more to buy a carrier bag.

What do you think?