Trip update Part 1: Museums and meatballs

trip11

It’s been more than 3 weeks since my trip to Sweden and the Netherlands and I finally found time to gather my thoughts and write about my meeting with IKEA.

I know some of you have been anxious to know the outcome and my apologies for not posting earlier. It wasn’t because I couldn’t talk about it. I have so much to say and found it hard to trim it down to a manageable blog post. Hence the trilogy.

For those who just want the scoop (and not my rambles), here is it.

I did not meet a single person in IKEA of Sweden or Delft who wanted to shut down IKEAhackers.

Seriously, none.

In fact, they were very supportive. Even the designers whose furniture we hacked, sawed, repainted, reshaped into things unrecognisable like what we do on IKEAhackers and are pretty tickled to see their designs turned into frankenthings.

The meeting with Torbjörn Lööf, the CEO of Inter IKEA Systems B.V. together with Anders, Henrik and Lena, was open, warm and honest. They recognised the contributions of IKEAHackers and admitted that they “did not handle this (the trademark issue with IH) very well”.

What impressed me most was their willingness to admit their mistake, make a u-turn and find a solution that was good for both parties.

Various suggestions were thrown back and forth and we came to the agreement that IKEA will continue to let me use its trademark on my domain, IKEAhackers.net, as long as my site does not bring harm or damage to the IKEA brand. (eg. porn, nudity, drugs – that kind of stuff which won’t not appear anyways.) As of today, I have yet to receive a draft of the agreement. But for now, in all likelihood …

IKEAHackers.net stays. 

Yay! Pop the lingonberry juice!

I want to thank you for your support in this crazy situation. Without your very vocal support, I doubt I could have made this behemoth corporation change its mind. By now, you must tire of hearing me say this, but I will say it again from the bottom of my heart – THANK YOU! I am beyond happy. So let’s raise our saws and continue hacking!

Now for the blow-by-blow story which means you can stop here if that’s not your thing… 

Click to read the rest of the story on JULES’ blog.

See the entire IKEA Trip Update Series