IKEA Bought TaskRabbit So You’ll Never Have to Assemble Furniture Again
If you’re anything like us, you’ve already ransacked IKEA’s super-hygge winter collection and you’re ready to hack your way into a cozy AF homestead for the season. But as any tried-and-true IKEA shopper knows, the furniture can be… challenging to put together, to say the least (even Ryan Reynolds knows it). Apparently, IKEA knows it too, because the Swedish retailer bought TaskRabbit to take care of all your future furniture assembly needs, AND the homewares giant hasn’t ruled out other, similar acquisitions.
According to Recode, the home goods mecca bought the on-demand labor marketplace for an undisclosed sum back in September, making a previous UK-based collaborative experiment between the two official. Last month, IKEA Group CEO Jesper Brodin said this is only the beginning.
“This is the next step for IKEA — IKEA 2.0,” Brodin told Bloomberg. “We will be a fantastic retail business but we’ll also have a greater development structure and organization than we’ve had in a long time.”
The move reportedly comes as an attempt to compete with companies such as Amazon, who recently upped its home-services game to offer furniture assembly, house cleaning, plumbing, and more as needed.
We have no doubt that the skilled workers at TaskRabbit will be up to the job — they have, after all, carried out some pretty important tasks in their day, from helping with wedding day setups to planning romantic Valentine’s Day dates.
There’s no word yet on when TaskRabbit will be fully integrated into IKEA’s on-demand offerings, but in the meantime, we’ll merely rejoice in the fact that there’s a light at the end of our infuriating shelf-building tunnel. Thank goodness!
Will you use TaskRabbit to put your IKEA furniture together? Let us know @BritandCo!
(Photo via Andreas Rentz/Getty)