Ikea is an amazing store and an amazing concept. It proves something to me that I have been saying for years. People go out of their way for a deal. People also do not mind the ?do it yourself? concept. This in part is pretty amazing when you consider the facts. When a new IKEA store opens they have 25,000 visitors for their opening. That is a lot of do it yourselfers. There is a significant target demographic that wants nothing to do with assembly or finishing a product. However the numbers of people purchasing from these stores shows a staggering difference. People will make a lot of effort to save a little money. Consider this; IKEA carrys over 10000 items in their stores and catalogs. The stores are the size of five football fields. The stores are six times bigger than your average Target or Walmart and they have a global following.



If you compare the concept of do it yourself to business you get an interesting analogy. In business, most owners, vendors, store operators, franchise owners, and webmasters do not really embrace the concept of do it yourself. If people that are contemplating a new business idea or start up business, they find it hard to put in the effort that is needed to market a site or business. Ironically in business that is exactly what you need to do to succeed. I find that when I am in the trenches writing articles or figuring out how to get links, that is when I think of new ideas and concepts. It's an invigorating process but it does take effort. You can easily see why that people hire out so many avenues of promotion and marketing for their businesses. The reason is because it's not fun. I would have to say assembling furniture is not fun either, but I have to think that most people think that saving money is fun. It must be fun becasue they swarm to a new store opening like flys to fresh meat.

If you were to build a business on the concept of do it yourself or building something yourself, and you were to make it a fun process, you would probably have a winner. Once the word got out about how cool and fun your business concept is, you would be flooded with visitors and people ready to give you their hard earned money. The do it yourself concept does work, but you have to be creative.

Being creative is fun but does involve some work and thus you are starting to come around to the catch 22 of business. What service or business do you offer? How do you make it fun? And how do you make it easy? This is the $64,000 question (remember that show?) When you stumble upon this formula you can have something like the IKEA effect working for you. You never know, people may take the day off of work to come visit you and find out how fun it is to do business with you.