Furniture Order: Fill & Download for Free

As a young woman, I was trying to break into the interior design field, and took a job at a furniture store. The owner was awful: I can say, without hyperbole, that if he was involved with someone or something, that it turned out to be dirty. He cheated on his wife, his customers, his suppliers, his insurance company, his employees—and this is just the stuff I had personal knowledge of. He was best friends with the governor of our state at a time when, it was discovered much later, that official was having an affair with a young teenager. No surprise to me. He would have suppliers in for trunk shows, and, in the middle of the night, have an entrusted employee come to the store to pull product out of the vendor’s stock. Outright theft. He filed false insurance claims, saying that shopworn furniture, or even just used furniture from his own home, were part of truck fender benders, and collect on them.The women who worked there for any length of time were, almost without exception, abused at home, and in twisted relationships with this guy; he would rage, swear, degrade them, and then apologize, and the women would —quite literally—weep with gratitude. It was shocking to me. One day, he went off on me, in a phone call. It was absolutely awful. I asked a question for a customer, and he raged obscenities at me for ten minutes. I decided that moment that, as soon as I had another job, I was out of there. I told my manager, an older woman whose took beatings from her husband at home and verbal and emotional abuse at the store, that I would be gone as soon as I could. The next day, one of the owner’s daughters showed up at the store with a dozen red roses for me, with a weird note apologizing for being ‘inappropriate’. The women there at the store gathered around me like I was being pinned: “Oh, he’s changed so much! How wonderful!” I was revolted by it. He called me later to ask if I’d received them, expecting, I’m sure, for me to marvel over them; I couldn’t.The Revenge.I was aware (as everyone else there was) of a long term layaway—a couple who had a sadly damaged newborn, and were almost ruined by it, at a time that they had furniture on order. Rather than cancel the order, as the people asked when they saw what was happening with their baby, their order was changed to a layaway, and they were charged 21% interest, for seven years, for furniture they didn’t receive. Further, much of that furniture, ordered, being paid for over all that time, had been sold to other people! So this owner was paid for the furniture and delivered it, to others, while collecting monthly payments, with 21% interest, from these people who just wanted out.One day, the customer came in: “My name is _________ ____________ and we just paid off our furniture! We want to set up delivery!” I thought, whoa…..how does he handle this? I listened as the customer talked on the phone to the owner. “Yes, we are proud of ourselves too!” Nothing about a problem, or reselecting. Rather than just say, there has been a mistake, I need to work with you to find some replacement furniture, this grifter owner’s choice was to just fake it, deliver up something he had, and keep their money. I watched over the next few days, as the warehouse guys worked to try to spray chairs to match an old, shopworn table they had found. After the delivery, I asked the guys how it went, if the customers accepted what was delivered, and they said the couple actually got into an argument about whether the furniture was right!So I wrote to them. I told them they had been done a disservice in their furniture order, and if they wanted to talk to me, they should call me at home. They called at 6 am the morning after they received it, and we talked it through. I suggested they try to let the owner save face, give him proof that the furniture was wrong (he had substituted $99 Made in Taiwan-marked chairs for their $400 Drexel Heritage chairs, and Drexel was made in North Carolina: BINGO!); the owner’s response to him was “The statute of limitations was over years ago on this, and don’t bother me.”So they sued him. With my help. And won!! I testified against him, I brought in others. A lawyer for his insurance company was in the courtroom and called me to get a take on him. He succeeded against him too. At least once. I know I was under his skin because, for years after, any time I would be publicized for a new position, he would send private investigators around to pose as clients, try to get me to say something bad about him. (A sales rep heard about it, and called to warn me, so I knew to be vigilant.) Since I always spoke truth, he never got anywhere. He is still in business, bigger than ever, but I cost him some significant time and money and prestige, and feel like I did my part. Sweet revenge.

Yes, if that’s what the lender is asking for. Obviously.However, that’s not what the lender is asking for. The lender is asking for proof that your furniture order was cancelled. That furniture order—as your agent explained to you—pushed your debt-to-income ratio over the allowable limit. (That was after your agent told you not to make any big purchases.) Since you went ahead and committed to spend several thousand dollars on furniture, your numbers no longer work. They will work if you cancel the furniture purchase. The lender wants proof that you’ve cancelled the purchase.However, lending underwriters are very, very picky. Find out specifically what the lender is asking for. Then provide it. If you want the mortgage.

ABOUT IKEA1. The Americans hesitated to buy IKEA beds because they didn't know what numbers like "160 cm" meant on the label. Sales more than doubled when IKEA finally introduced king and queen-sized beds.2. The famous IKEA restaurants, which now make IKEA the biggest exporter of Swedish food, originates from humble free buns and coffee offerings on the opening of their first store at Älmhult. Ingvar (IKEA founder) himself was terrified when he saw an enormous army of customers lining up in front of the shabby building. They must had been more than a thousand people! Would the floor hold, and would everyone get the free bun and coffee promised? Both turned out to be yes, and the idea of serving food at the store has evolved over the years to become what it is today. In fact, one of IKEA's mottos now is "you can't do good business on empty stomach."3. Price wars and the consequent decline in quality gave birth to the concept of catalogue and IKEA stores. The catalogue with the entire product range offered would tempt the customers to come to the store. They then would be be able to see the difference in quality between the cheap (and bad) ironing board and the slightly more expensive one, and promptly order the latter. This combination of mail-order and furniture exhibition as one business was a revolutionary concept in 1952. Previously people could only rely on the description on the advertisement of mail-order companies and could not touch/see the products they ordered.4. The biggest irony: the dynamic and rising IKEA was boycotted by its competitors & the National Association of Furniture Dealers in Sweden (a supposedly free market and democratic society). IKEA had to go to Poland, a communist country, to fulfill the furniture orders from customers in liberal country.5. The second biggest irony: the boycott and attempts to destroy IKEA made IKEA even stronger. People could not be bothered with the industry affairs and sought IKEA who had cheap and quality goods. IKEA also came back from Poland with even lower prices thanks to the ridiculously low production cost, thus solidifying further its dominance in Sweden. Now, more than 50 years later, Poland is one of the biggest manufacturers of IKEA products.6. Swedwood, an IKEA subsidiary company which supplies IKEA its own products, still has to compete in price with other suppliers for orders. This is to ensure constant effort in maximising efficiency without compromising price and quality. The fact that Swedwood's only client is IKEA confirms its outstanding performance.7. IKEA's headquarter is not in Sweden, but Netherlands.8. IKEA was known for its low price, not quality products -- until the study done by the magazine Allt i Hemmet. It was revealed that many of IKEA products had equal or better quality than their counterparts sold by more expensive competitors. This propelled IKEA's status in the minds of the mainstream middle class. Five years later, IKEA began putting testing machines at the entrance of the stores to demonstrate the robustness of IKEA chairs.9. IKEA second store in Kungens kurva had 18,000 customers on its opening day. It was so hectic that the first IKEA store in Älmhult had to close early and all its staff was sent to help the staff in Kungens kurva store. Even with double the manpower, the mob's rampage was still uncontrollable -- some took the goods without paying. The manager even caught a carpet thief at the parking lot.10. Umbrellas at IKEA are sold at half price on rainy days and double the price on sunny days.11. When IKEA was branching out to the rest of Europe, a lot of unorthodox tactics were used to increase market share. For example, customers would be handed a Swedish wooden shoe and told that the other shoe could be collected at other stores. During Christmas, IKEA would sell Christmas trees which could be refunded post-Christmas.12. The "hot dog" strategy. IKEA sells a few items at ridiculously low prices. The origin? Ingvar's idea to sell hot dogs at a price almost as low as the cost to make it. Most people know how much a hot dog costs on a street vendor (more expensive by a big margin compared to IKEA's), and thereby associate IKEA with good value for money.13. IKEA has child care and playground because "who can do vital shopping with the kids yelling all around their feet?"14. IKEA owns all of the properties it uses and it does not borrow money. Ingvar once joked "They could have accused me of murder, but not of borrowing money!" Thus, IKEA is a privately-owned company and has no intention of going public. They believe that going public would hamper their ability to focus on the long term.15. IKEA was originally a mail-order firm.16. STØR, an American copycat of IKEA, went down after its much applauded break into the market. STØR was only able to mimic the superficial characteristics of IKEA (store layout, restaurants, childcare), but not its pricing, distribution, and so on.17. To reduce staff turnover, an IKEA store in Seattle distributes the whole sales on one Saturday in a year to its employees. The longer the staff has been employed, the bigger chunk of pie he/she would have gotten. This 'bonus' could go up to $10,000 for someone who has been with the store since its inauguration.18. A consultant that Ingvar hired to give advice resigned after one day of work. He said something along the lines of "If prior to me coming here you had asked whether a furniture company in a run-down building and isolated place like this could thrive, I would have said no. Yet, here it is and it is successful. I can't be of any help to you."ABOUT INGVAR KAMPRAD (IKEA founder)1. Ingvar is half German heritage-wise. His grandparents came to and settled down in Agunnaryd, Sweden without knowing a single word of Swedish.2. Ingvar was infatuated by Nazi in his teenage years, thanks to the influence of his father and grandmother who were pro-Nazi. His involvement with the Nazi group in Sweden would later on came back and bit him hard in the 90s, long after he stopped supporting Nazi and Nazism.2. Initially the young Kamprad was only selling pens, watches, erasers and other trinkets. IKEA only started selling furnitures to imitate its competitors. After the first batch of furnitures were sold in no time at all, Ingvar started focusing on furnitures.3. Ingvar did not have the vision of the current IKEA, or anything resembling it, when he started IKEA. To him, creating profit was all there was in business.4. In the 50s, Ingvar was bankrupt on paper while IKEA was soaring. This was due to the exorbitant wealth tax and because most of his wealth was locked in the company.5. For its first decade, IKEA was Ingvar Kamprad.6. Ingvar was still working full-time at 85 and with a pace maker.Source:The IKEA Story: Ingvar Kamprad Talks to Bertil Torekull (2011 edition).