The suits over at Ikea have mastered the art of selling hip, inexpensive furniture.
It now looks like they’ve mastered the art of advertising, too.
Talk about a tear-jerker, check out this latest ad from Ikea that’s running in France.
Over the past year or so, Ikea has been under a lot of pressure, particularly from the European Commission which recently decided the company owes about a billion dollar is unpaid taxes. Although the company has paid its taxes in accordance with all the laws and regulations in every region it operates, the EU doesn’t like that the company used loopholes to reduce its tax bill.
While I certainly don’t like the idea of unfair taxation (and I would happily make the argument that there is no such thing as “fair taxation” as taxation is theft), technically Ikea has done nothing wrong.
That being said, this recent battle with the EU has not been a welcomed piece of PR for the company.
Reading through some comments that followed an editorial regarding Ikea’s tax issues with the EU, I found quite a few folks claiming they’ll never go to Ikea again. But Ikea’s got nothing to worry about.
Truth is, the Ikea dynasty is as strong as ever.
The company continues to pump out new ideas and new marketing strategies that continue to keep those big blue stores crowded. And with Ikea’s pledge to power all its stores with renewable energy by 2020, not only is it enjoying some lovely publicity that puts big smiles on the faces of the world’s most excitable treehuggers, it’s also enjoying an operational cost advantage by utilizing energy sources that offer a very impressive return on investment.
Of course, the question is, if Ikea were publicly traded, and you could buy Ikea stock on the open market, would it be a good investment?
I suppose it all depends on what those shares would be going for. But I can tell you that if you could buy Ikea stock, and the price per share was fair and reasonable, it would likely be an excellent long-term play in the retail sector.
Whether or not Ikea will go public anytime soon is still up in the air.
There’s always rumors of an IPO. We’ve been hearing them for years. But it’s still good to keep tabs on any company that could eventually go public and make all of us a lot of money. Ikea is definitely on the top of that list.
