We're no longer colonising with tanks, but with flat-pack furniture.
Behind the reassuring blue and yellow, IKEA has methodically transformed Switzerland into a captive market: interiors standardised, local brands sacrificed, quality sacrificed for volume, and profits exported out of the country. What presents itself as “democratic design” is in reality a system of economic, environmental and cultural predation. IKEA is not just a furniture shop. It is the perfect symbol of a model that impoverishes while pretending to enrich.
We were sold IKEA as democratic design.
The reality is much more brutal: standardisation of interiors, crushing of the local commercial fabric, accelerated deterioration in quality, and siphoning off value outside Switzerland.
Beneath its blue and yellow facades, IKEA embodies predatory globalisation: produce ever more cheaply, sell ever more, replace rather than repair.
It's not a retailer. It's a model of destruction.
1) The break-up of the Swiss mid-range: when local producers die in silence
IKEA has not only competed with top-of-the-range and low-cost brands.
It has wiped out the mid-range, This is the kind of business that provides a livelihood for local retailers, suppliers, joiners and logisticians.
Swiss brands have disappeared or have been rolled back: Interio, Pfister, Fly Suisse and countless independent shops are also unable to compete:
- from artificially subsidised global volumes,
- from costs squeezed by extreme outsourcing,
- a permanent pressure on prices which makes quality economically impossible.
The result: less real choice, fewer skilled jobs, less local added value.
2) Ecological window-dressing, real deforestation
IKEA loves green... in its brochures.
Behind them are :
- intensive forest monocultures (eucalyptus, pine), which destroy biodiversity,
- massive extraction of wood at low cost in under-regulated areas,
- massive use of glues, resins, chipboard rich in formaldehydes and volatile compounds.
Sustainable“ furniture is often designed to last.
Not by accident - by business model.
3) Toxic products, non-existent reparability
The IKEA model is based on :
- fragile composite materials,
- proprietary parts,
- assemblies that are impossible to repair properly.
Furniture that breaks is not repaired: it is replaced.
It's anti-craft, anti-sustainability, anti-sense.
⮕ They call it “cheap”. In reality, it's disposable.
4) Tax: the art of leaving almost nothing behind
IKEA is a master of aggressive tax optimisation :
- holding structures,
- internal charges,
- legal engineering via the Netherlands and other complaisant jurisdictions.
Sales take place here.
Profits, travel.
While Swiss SMEs pay through the nose, the global giant Dries up the tax base.
It's legal - and deeply destructive.
5) Low-cost subcontracting: the hidden face of “design for all”
Behind each shelf at 39 francs :
- a chain of subcontractors under extreme pressure,
- very low-cost countries,
- crushed margins,
- lower social standards.
Swiss consumers think they're getting a bargain.
In reality, it finances a global dumping system.
6) IKEA, the perfect symbol of money that lies
IKEA is the natural offspring of the fiat currency downgraded :
- continuous decline in quality,
- illusion of purchasing power,
- permanent replacement presented as progress.
We no longer own anything.
We consume, we throw away, we start again.
It is no coincidence that the fortune of the founder's family Ingvar Kamprad - known for a obsessive avarice and even in its daily life - has accumulated billions, outside the countries where the value was created.
Conclusion - Switzerland is not a global showroom
IKEA is not neutral.
He replaces quality with volume, Sustainability through renewal, local production through global dependence.
Boycotting IKEA is not about nostalgia.
It means being lucid.
⮕ For our real purchasing power.
⮕ For our forests, not those in brochures.
⮕ For our SMEs, our craftsmen, our jobs.
⮕ For a Switzerland that produces, repairs and passes on - instead of furnishing its submission in kit form.
Sovereignty also begins in the living room.
And it starts with a simple decision: no longer finance what destroys in the long term.
🇨🇭 Without funding, there can be no resistance. Support Swiss Sovereignty now: https://souverainete-suisse.ch/faire-un-don/
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