Business Insider Puts Ikea's 5-Minute Furniture Assembly Claim to the Test

When you are shopping for furniture, it’s easy to be dazzled by the massive array of pieces out there. If you are looking for furniture for just one room, you can go to a living room furniture store or another similar store. You can often find affordable designer furniture in local stores as well as online. If you only want to shop online, there are affordable furniture pay online sites that make the entire process easy. Whether you are looking for affordable solid wood furniture or laminate items, you can find them both online and in person.

If you want to see and touch the furniture before you buy it, you can look for local affordable quality furniture stores. These stores have large showrooms that allow you to interact with the furniture. This can help you to pick out just the right pieces. You can sit on the chairs and sofas, lay on the mattresses, etc. Many people prefer buying their furniture this way because it also lets you see exactly how large each piece really is. If you go to multiple furniture stores, you are likely to see a lot of things that you like. You can also try to haggle when you buy your items.

Updated 4/13/2021

Everyone needs furniture in their home, but not everyone knows that you can get amazing furniture online. There are countless amazing furniture stores that are located online, and some of them even have free shipping. It’s easy to shop for items like dining room sets online. You can look through everything the store has to offer, and you can do it all on your own schedule. It would be difficult to look at so much furniture at a physical furniture store.

If you need affordable designer furniture, there are a number of affordable quality furniture stores both online and offline. Some people want to shop in person because they want to touch the furniture and to sit on the chairs or couch. Shopping in person may be less convenient, but it can be a good way to find the textures and colors that you really want for your home. When you go out in person, it can also be fun to interact with the salespeople and to have them answer your questions. Some people worry about very large items being shipped to them, but all precautions are taken so that large pieces arrive in just the condition as they left the warehouse.

Last week, furniture giant Ikea released a new line of furniture, Regissör, that it claims includes only products that can be assembled in five minutes or less.

On Oct. 10, Business Insider decided to put Ikea’s claim to the test, purchasing three Regissör bookshelves and roping reporter Pam Engel, Executive Editor Joe Weisenthal and CEO Henry Blodget into each assembling one.

Video documentation of the experiment (a well-filmed and entertaining watch) follows the efforts.

At five minutes, none of the three have their bookcase more than a third assembled. After 10 minutes, the first effort to stand one of the bookcases up results in pieces falling to the ground.

The final time for the first completed project (Blodget’s) comes to 17 minutes and 12 seconds.

The line includes cabinets and a coffee table, in addition to the bookshelf used in the video test.

According to the instructions, no tools, screws or bolts are used to secure the pieces, though the BI video features Weisenthal using a smartphone as a makeshift hammer. Instead, the line includes wooden wedge dowels that are intended to be snapped into place using only the assembler’s hands.

Market Share

Ikea is the world’s largest furniture chain, and has been making a push to expand its following from college students outfitting dorms to homebuyers decorating entire houses — even including semi-custom installs for bathrooms and kitchens.

The company had a strong year in 2013, but announced recently that it is rebranding itself in an effort to double sales by 2020 for a projected annual total of 50 billion euros.

However, many consumers remain resistant to Ikea’s pull-it-yourself warehouse setups and often frustrating assembly requirements.

The sometimes hours-long process of putting together flat-packed Ikea furniture has even spawned countless memes and parodies online.