Hail the real bargain of tabledom!

We got the IKEA 2010 brochure through a few weeks ago and whilst its ubiquity means that for many its not given even a cursory glance there are some really interesting changes. IKEA often make annual references to cost cuttings past onto customers through refinement of production, transportation etc but this time you couldn't help but notice, the Lack sidetable in solid colours was reduced from £7.99 to £4.99. There's a huge amount of snobbery and elitism in the design community, to a degree its impossible for anyone involved to not be partially guilty, but no designer can deny that a perfectly functioning table for under a fiver is simply brilliant.

The Lack range, for the money, is a great range. It gets unfairly dismissed as a cheap product with jibes about cardboard construction and shoddy build, but its a £5 product! How much does its nearest competitor cost? For the price of 2 pints (real beer we're talking about, not alco-pop lager) you've got a perfectly functioning, neutral table that will survive and function satisfactorily for years. If treated and looked after in the same regard as an equivalent table costing £300+ it would last for ages. But no, its treated as the bargain product it is, gets knocked about, sat on, abused, and then moaned about as a cheap and nasty piece of furniture befit for students for 9 months then binned when they move out of their squalid rental properties.

I'm sure that the real reason for many designers/specifiers distaste for it lies in the fact they can't really spec it, they're not going to if they can't make their usual percentage on it, and even if IKEA did offer an interior designers discount there's not a whole lot of margin in £5.00.

So all hail the real bargain of tabledom, arise Sir Lack!