Image Via flickr User The Consumerist

According to the classic vision of Canada, our cities and towns began as isolated outposts of European civilization—colonies and trading posts surrounded by vast tracts of forest. Today, those forests have given way to burgeoning suburbs—along with golden arches, Tim Horton’s drive- throughs and big-box stores such as Ikea.

If the forest was the past, perhaps Ikea is the future. Enter one of their warehouse-sized furniture stores (11 in Canada now, and counting) and you find a global bazaar. Here are chairs from Sweden (Ikea’s homeland), computer desks from China, floor tiles from Germany—all of them bearing unnatural, vaguely globalized names such as Ektorp, Oppli, Benno and Mammut. Packed flat on three-story pallets, perfect for ocean transport on crowded container ships or for hauling home in your minivan, they are ready to be assembled and installed by homeowners from Calgary to Kuwait.

As an international success story, Ikea is a testament to Scandinavian design and initiative—proof that good ideas and great craftsmanship still make a difference in today’s commoditized world. Yet Ikea also creates opportunities for manufacturers all over the world, because the furniture it designs may be produced by outside companies almost anywhere in the world. Low-wage emerging economies such as China, Slovenia, Romania, Poland and Slovakia are well represented in your local Ikea, but so are developed countries such as Sweden, Germany and Denmark. And what about Canada, with its vast forest resources? Search
Ikea’s shelves high and low, and you may spot a chest of drawers from the Malm line of bedroom furnishings that is made by an unnamed Canadian supplier. Look harder and you’ll even find a Canadian-made bookshelf—made of unfinished softwood crudely nailed together—that humbly retails for under $2.