In West Berkeley's loosely defined furniture district, owners couldn't help but fear the advent of the big blue superstore next door. The basic IKEA style -- clean lines, canvas fabrics, polished wood -- was just boring enough to have wide appeal, and just cheap enough to pose serious problems.
IKEA's coming looked and smelled like adversity. But instead, some of the would-be victims are tasting unexpected success.
The unlikely tale began in early 2000, when a few brave souls on and around Berkeley's 7th Street decided to try to transform the coming of IKEA from a threat to an opportunity.
Eight stores -- Evolution, European Sleep Works, Galvin's, The Magazine, Traditions, The Wooden Duck and Zentrum -- put aside their long-standing local rivalries to create the Berkeley Furniture Association. They banded together to market their district as a fertile shopping destination and alternative to IKEA.
In part, the store owners' initial fears about the new store's popularity were well-founded. From day one it seemed that the entire 20- to 40-year-old population of the Bay Area was scurrying through IKEA's showroom maze, sampling its Swedish meatballs and idling in the loading zone. The place is a zoo at just about any hour of a weekday, and on weekends it's like somebody left the monkey cages open.
I went there as a curious spendthrift, looking for linen curtains. I left as a good American consumer, $500 in debt for a bunch of stuff I didn't need.
IKEA's selection and prices are all they're cracked up to be. But the store lacks effective customer service, and exchanges or returns quickly become Kafka-esque adventures.
Much of what's on display isn't actually in stock. Delivery is inconvenient and expensive. The showroom seems designed to make shoppers disoriented, and I don't want to think about the chaos inside if there were a fire.
Berkeley Furniture Association members have been taking notes.
"When people actually go through IKEA, they see that furniture is not meant to be sold that way," said Eric Gellerman, the co-owner of The Wooden Duck on 7th Street. "We guide our customers through the whole process, from the drawing board to delivering it to their house, and they pay us for a higher quality product and an emphasis on customer service."
Despite the contrast, no one expected that IKEA's popularity would actually turn out to be a blessing. The store draws furniture-hunters from far and wide, and Association members believe that when people come to IKEA, they commit their day to furniture shopping -- so it's not such a stretch to make a run to 7th Street while they're in the neighborhood.
The symbiosis has been furthered by the Association's cooperative marketing efforts. These have included chartering a banner-dragging plane to fly around IKEA's opening, advertising the Association's Web site: www.berkeleyfurniture.com.
After the one-year anniversary passed in April, the numbers told the tale: association members reported profit about 30 percent higher than usual.
Perhaps this is an anomaly in the overall scheme of American retail. A WalMart opening, for example, is usually a death sentence for a town's independent stores. But superstores also have weaknesses, and sometimes commerce breeds commerce.
One of the people who came up with the idea for the furniture association, Patrick Galvin of Galvin's Business & Home Office Furniture, said that though it may have started as a reaction to a threat, it has become an example of something much greater.
"Retailers are usually very competitive and jealous of one another," he said. "What we found is that by working together, the rising tide lifted all boats. It's probably the same in other industries: there are opportunities to cooperate instead of just compete, and people just have to be willing to try it."