Back in March of 2014, IKEAhackers caught the attention of IKEA as they sent a cease and desist letter due to trademark infringement. After Malaysian Jules Yap, founder of the furniture hack site was invited to Sweden to meet with the designers and IKEA, the furniture giant has decided to let Yap keep the website domain.
IKEAhackers is a community of individuals that display their modification and repurposing of IKEA products. The website appeared on IKEA’s radar after seeing the amount of attention the fansite had garnered as Yap’s website draws an average of 30,000 visitors each day and upwards of 458,000 visitors after Yap made IKEA’s warning public.
Throughout the duration of the entire trip, Yap stated that she did not meet anyone who wanted to shut IKEAhackers.net down. In fact, many of the furniture designers she spoke to were supportive of the fansite. Yap said that during her meeting with Torbjörn Lööf, CEO of Inter IKEA Systems B.V., an understanding was reached that allows IKEAhackers.net to operate as long as IKEAhackers does not bring harm to the IKEA brand through inappropriate elements such as narcotics, profanity or nudity.
IKEA has definitely set a good example in terms of PR management as evident in the positive comments by readers and furniture enthusiasts alike. Yap has said that she admires IKEA’s admittance to their mistake, after recognising that contribution of IKEAhackers.
[Source: IKEAhacker]
