This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and check out other Battle of the Brands posts.
For every time in your adult life, there is a lifestyle store to go along with it. IKEA is your freshman year in college, your first job, the apartment, you share with three strangers you met on Craigslist. Crate & Barrel is growing up: housewarming gifts, engagement parties, wedding registries, dinner parties. At IKEA, you can very well imagine arguing over who does dishes; with Crate & Barrel, you suspect a maid should be doing them (or at the very least, a whisper-quiet stainless steel dishwasher).
The two stores, too, are redolent of the cultures that incubated them. IKEA is Scandinavian, cool and spare and with the timeless efficiency and modernity of the Swedes. Crate and Barrel, on the other hand, was started in Chicago by a couple who had just returned from a European honeymoon; it reflects the penchant of well-to-do Americans to catch up every imported fad and embrace it as their own. So while Crate & Barrel's style hops from Japan to Tuscany to Providence and never seems to settle on a single influence, IKEA's is constant, playful, deliberate.
Like any lover of food, good company, and pretty glassware of moderate means, I have gone through both the IKEA and Crate & Barrel phases, and come through the end of them and settled back again on IKEA. I appreciate its constancy and wide selection, and especially its focus on children (as it turns out, the love-and-marriage set often ends up having little ones who quickly break the dozen old-fashioned glasses, the heavy water pitcher, the handsome oversized plates); I like that I can still find some of the same forks I purchased 10 years ago when I was in my first-job stage. The way I think about it, Crate & Barrel is the wedding, but IKEA is the marriage -- the lifestyle store that you can live with when the honeymoon is a distant memory.
Vote in our poll for IKEA or Crate & Barrel as your preferred brand, and let us know in the comments why you love it.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-29-2008 @ 7:02PM
cwboibttmup` said...
I don't really see the comparison here. They are very different sores. Ikea is first apartment, Crate and Barrel is first home. I lived in Philly when the first Ikea in the country opened and I still have dishs that I bought there. White porcelain with navy banding. I can dress them up or do casual and they are very nice and elegant.
But they really aren't the same kind of store, except that niether of them is selling real furniture, hierloom quality stuff.
5-03-2008 @ 3:44PM
Jim said...
I'm not sure you can really compare these two either.
While IKEA has a clear focus on the classic principal of "Form Follows Function" (with pleasing aesthetics being part of Function) Crate & Barrel is nothing but pure accessory fluff.
At C/B you have to wonder "why are they pushing orange this season when they were pushing blue six months ago". Is blue now bad, was it bad 6 months ago, of is it all just whims of fashion to C/B and the C/B consumer?
IKEA has always and probably will always have the same design sensibility with a purpose more than "fashion"
Of course neither store sells items of real quality, but at least at IKEA you are only paying for a short term use.
Actually it seems the backlash against the whole "Crate & Barrel look" seems to be moving more in the direction of IKEA for a timeless yet, timely aesthetic.
5-03-2008 @ 4:03PM
Darcy said...
I prefer IKEA because I can walk through the store at my own pace, look at and touch everything...yes, IKEA is user-friendly. I'll only go to Crate & Barrel when I want some snooty sales clerk to try and guess my net worth before deciding if I'm worthy of a "hello". To sum it up, in the past two years I've spent $13. at C&B and $2000. at IKEA.
5-03-2008 @ 4:42PM
Glo said...
No comparison to the two stoes so why did AOL think it would be of great importance?
Crate and Barrel for extras. IKEA for basic long lasting things.
5-03-2008 @ 7:29PM
DCARRFORTWORTH said...
I love Ikea but Crate and Barrel has much nicer things, need I add the things are much more expensive? As I said before, I love Ikea!!
5-03-2008 @ 8:07PM
Misty said...
I prefer Ikea--it's cheaper and very nice quality. Crate and Barrel is nice to look at but if you are on a budjet it is very pricey. If I was going to buy quality stuff it would be in NC for furniture but the HGTV always used Ikea in NY on their shows so thats good enough for me.
5-06-2008 @ 6:23PM
PandaBear said...
I think blogging stock need to stop trolling for people's opinion and start debate by doing senseless comparison. Comparing Kodak and Cannon is already borderline absurd (one is a high tech optical equipment company while the other make mostly from photo printing and brand name).
Now Ikea and CB? Come on, why don't you do a comparison between Goldman and your local credit union?
5-06-2008 @ 7:52PM
Stacey said...
I agree, there really is no way to reasonably compare the two stores.
I can say this much, I drive from New Mexico to Arizona about every 4-6 months, just to go to IKEA (well, I visit my brother too, but he knows why I'm really there ;) )
I wouldn't be surprised if Crate and Barrell doesn't turn up on the "another one of our favorite stores is going under", list any time now. With the Walmarts and IKEA's getting so big, and gas at $4 a gallon, it's just not justifiable to spend that kind of money on "stuff". Besides, at the lower prices, you can afford to change things up every now and then, so you don't have to look at the same salad plates for the rest of your life!