I'm back in Belfast, where the big talk is the new IKEA store which opened on Saturday, the largest IKEA in Europe. In anticipation of the massive crowd, five hundred staff were waiting, and the police had carefully organised local traffic diversions to cause minimum disruption to the city and to facilitate effective traffic control should the crowds become too great. In simple terms, if IKEA got too crowded, they'd stop the traffic going there.
When the Birmingham IKEA store opened, thousands of people turned up, each of them with the sole intention of buying one or more of the hundred half-price sofas that had been reduced to celebrate the store's opening. People were seriously injured in the crush. To prevent a similar occurrence taking place on the emerald Isle, police had advised IKEA not to hold any special promotion for the first few days after the opening.
The day came and saw some four hundred visitors to the new store. Four hundred. That's a hundred less people than there were staff present. I don't know about you, but I find that slightly amusing, even though I'm not really sure why.
IKEA recently ran an advertising campaign with the slogan "Home is the most important place in the world". One wonders if perhaps it was too successful?