Hipsters Can’t Wait For Huge Chain Store To Put Mom & Pop Small Businesses Out Of Business

Sure, it’s a friendly, happy story about how high-income hipsters want an Ikea store to come to St. Louis:

Perhaps no other store has been rumored more often to be coming here soon than that elusive retailer whose very name gives many residents heart palpitations: Ikea.

The absence of the Swedish retailer — whose hulking blue and yellow stores are filled with sleek bookshelves, modern bedroom sets, and eclectic knickknacks— is a sore spot among many St. Louisans. As one of my colleagues put it, it’s one of the last bastions of our retail insecurity.

We now have Trader Joe’s, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom Rack, American Girl, H&M, Ross Dress for Less, and buybuy Baby (which recently opened a store in Ballwin).

To be sure, there are still some left on our retail wish-list: Zara, American Apparel, Bloomingdale’s, and Room & Board, to name a few.

But there is no bigger Holy Grail than Ikea.

As you can probably guess, I have never been in an Ikea. I’ve done my share of assembling particle board furniture, including a huge honking desk that cost me almost a thousand dollars, more than a dozen Sauder bookcases, many laminated storage cabinets with doors hanging awry, and a couple Sauder printer stands that even today function as major pieces of furniture in my domicile. I’ve bought none of them because of the logo on the box, though, so I can’t understand how prestige and status stem from furniture you have to put together yourself.

But I digress.

So the crowd that we would have called Yuppies thirty years ago want their Ikea in St. Louis. Even though this will put small businesses out of business:

As I wrote last year, there are a handful of businesses that have sprouted up around town that take orders and pick up items from one of the stores in Chicago and then bring them back to St. Louis. One of them is Expedite STL.

Another such company popped up earlier this year called Blue Square Delivery. It was started by brother Dave and Bill Carruthers of Des Peres as a side business. They take a big moving van to Ikea about every three to four weeks.

Sorry, I guess that’s brother-and-brother businesses. But still.

So, how does this differ from Walmart?

Mainly in that hipsters like Ikea, and hipsters do not like Walmart.

Don’t worry, yuppies. Some municipality in St. Louis County will eventually throw enough tax credits, special taxing districts, and other perks to draw Ikea to town.

(Hey, aren’t you a yuppie? No. I’m not that young anymore, and I live in the country.)

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