I am a Swede who was born and raised in Sweden and almost got IKEA with my mother's milk. In Sweden there is almost certainly an IKEA catalog in every home. I have been to the first ever IKEA store, which opened in the outskirts of Stockholm back in the 60s. They were the first ever to come up with the concept of walking through a showroom to pick out what you want, and then pick up boxes in the warehouse to go home and assemble the furniture yourself. The quality of their stuff was really poor in the beginning, it was kind of like buying a Japanese car at the time. The Japanese cars obviously have improved tremendously and so has IKEA (not to the same degree though) The bang for your buck is great and now the quality of their stuff is actually quite good. You just can't beat their selection when it comes to accessories. The only reason I'm not giving them more than 3 stars is their usually poor customer service, not very friendly personnel, and slow checkouts.