More than a thousand people queued up to try and buy an IKEA x Off White carpet. Photo: Weibo

The Chinese like to queue up. Two months ago, it was the Starbucks cat-paw cup. This week it was the IKEA x Off-White carpet.

Over 1,000 people lined up in front of Shanghai’s Xuhui shop for a collection of items produced in collaboration between IKEA and American designer Off-White, including the most popular “KEEP OFF” carpet.

The carpets were offered at at 1,999 yuan (US$297.6), but the demand was so high that the grey market price soared to over 10,000 yuan ($1,489) on online portals such as Taobao.com, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform.

Because of the big premium to be had on the grey market, speculators hired people to line up for the items.

According to the Shanghai Morning Post, they paid people for 50 yuan each ($7.44) to queue outside the IKEA Xuhui store in Shanghai from as early as 4am on Monday.

This led to the outlet having over 1,000 people lined up ahead of opening time with the crowd forming a snake pattern, the paper reported.

The Shanghai IKEA store was the only one that allowed people to line up for the sale. At a branch in Beijing, only online orders were accepted, with IKEA notifying lucky winners to come and pick up their purchases.

The IKEA x Off-White collection has been a big hit ever since it was launched last November. The most popular items by Off-White founder Virgil Abloh, a former artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton, have lately been changing hands at several times the retail price.

Youtube video

Join the Conversation

1521 Comments

  1. An interesting discussion is price comment. I feel that it’s best to write extra on this matter, it won’t be a taboo topic but usually individuals are not sufficient to speak on such topics. To the next. Cheers

  2. Facebook Autoliker, Auto Like, autolike, Photo Auto Liker, Facebook Auto Liker, Facebook Liker, auto like, Autoliker, Autoliker Facebook, Fb Autoliker, autoliker, facebook auto liker, Status Liker, Auto Liker, auto liker, Working Auto Liker, Status Auto Liker, Increase Facebook Likes, Autoliker, Photo Liker

  3. Nice post. I was checking constantly this blog and I’m impressed! Extremely useful info particularly the last part 🙂 I care for such info much. I was looking for this particular info for a very long time. Thank you and good luck.

  4. I have recently started a site, the information you offer on this website has helped me tremendously. Thank you for all of your time & work. “Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.” by George Jean Nathan.

  5. When someone writes an piece of writing he/she retains the idea of a user in his/her mind that how a user can be aware of it. So that’s why this piece of writing is perfect. Thanks!|