The engineers and designers at Ikea apparently got the memo about how annoying it is to assemble their furniture.
This week the world’s favorite low-budget furniture purveyor launched Regissör, a new line of flatpack furniture that the company claims can be assembled without tools in less than five minutes.
Courtesy of Ikea
“Customers can assemble the new REGISSÖR series—which includes a bookshelf, cabinets and a coffee table, using a new IKEA-developed solution that was designed on the factory floor together with suppliers,” the company writes in a press release. “Featuring special wedge dowels, furniture pieces assembled using this technique require no tools and have no loose pieces; you can put them together using only your hands.”
Courtesy of Ikea
The furniture has a lightweight design that is achieved by attaching poplar wood veneer to a frame that uses fewer raw materials. “The embossed grain surface in the poplar veneer enhances the wood feeling,” reads a product description, “and gives each piece of furniture its own unique character.” Hard to see much unique character in these product images, but the wedge-dowel assembly innovation might help win back some of a customer base scarred by previous attempts at Ikea furniture assembly, the root of domestic meltdowns and familiar fodder for pop cultural memes.
Courtesy of Ikea
“The new solution gives consumers more choices,” Janice Simonsen, design spokeswoman for Ikea in the U.S., said in the press release. “By making it even easier to assemble our furniture, we want to give people who may find it challenging a new reason for choosing IKEA.” Ikea plans to expand the line in the spring.
Check out the video to hear more from the Ikea designers and see how the wedge-dowel assembly works:
Via Fast Company
