Although we hold stock of IKEA items in Johannesburg, we are not officially affiliated to IKEA, just huge fanatics of their products. All our parallel imported IKEA products are 100% genuine and purchased normal retail from an IKEA store overseas. The IKEA products have been imported without the approval, or license of Inter IKEA Systems B.V (the registered owner of IKEA) and therefore no guarantee or warranty in respect of such goods will be honoured by them, however the Home Swede Home returns policy applies to all items purchased from us.
We unfortunately have a slightly complicated relationship with IKEA ☹ We love their products and company and love what we do. Recently they got our website host to take down our product pages and had over 100 of our Instagram posts deleted. This was due to the usage of their pics to sell IKEA items, which is illegal and IKEA has decided to enforce their rights, something they are fully entitled to.Â
So we were in the wrong, we did not think that it was an issue using IKEA's pictures as it was to sell genuine products and not fakes. We did try to negotiate and were hoping that IKEA would tolerate us using the pics considering they are not yet in the country.
As far as we understand they are currently not interested in entering the South African market for now, hopefully they will enter sometime in the future. We try to make it as clear as possible that we are not officially linked to IKEA and that we parallel import genuine IKEA products. We are just around helping fellow IKEA fans like ourselves to access their products till they decide to come here.
Some people don’t like us due to our pricing not being IKEA pricing, we are unfortunately a low margin business due to us paying normal retail at an IKEA store, incurring 20-30% South African customs duties, South African customs VAT, shipping costs, agents cost to go an do the shopping at the IKEA store for us, etc.
There are however many happy clients of ours whom really like the IKEA products and are happy we give them access to them and also introduce IKEA products they did not know of. We try to price our products so that we are a good alternative to other options locally. We have always rectified a situation at our own cost where a product has a factory fault or the couriers damaged them.
For us this a side-hustle business. Due to our operating model of purchasing retail we cannot afford to make enough to do this full time, hence why our warehouse is only open on weekends (Fri, Sat, Sun and Mon). We love IKEA products and appreciate their super cool designs and ideas, this is the passion that drives us to continue doing this. The challenges with IKEA will decrease our ability to grow the range of products we hold in stock in Johannesburg, however we will continue to do this even on a small scale and try to help fans like ourselves. We will perhaps focus more on our preorder service. For items that are listed on our website, if you can add it to your cart it means it is in stock in Johannesburg.
Apologies for the difficulties in purchasing from us for now due to the limited to none pictures of the products we sell, we will look to improve our business and service offering, and always live in the hope we can somehow come to an amicable agreement with IKEA that does not taint their name or product in any way.
Team Home Swede Home