IKEA is coming to the Philippines in 2020!

After years of speculation and waiting, IKEA made it official: it will open a store in the Philippines in 2020. It will be the Swedish retail company's biggest store globally, covering an area of 65,000 square meters.  The two-story building will be located at the Mall of Asia complex, and for added convenience to loyal SM customers, there will be a walkway that will connect the store to the mall.

image from the Internet

I've been to an Ikea store in Singapore, and it was a great experience.  Although it was like going through a maze, I was like a child in a candy store.  By the way, I am not really interested in their furniture, which doesn't look durable.  What really made me go around the labyrinth-like store were the home accessories like curtains, cushion covers, and decor. Plus, the products were priced reasonably that you can be forgiven for indulging.  Hopefully, the future local Ikea store will use the same price points when they finally opened their doors in 2020.  Online shopping will also be available for those who want to buy stuff from the comforts of their home.  But personally, I prefer to see and touch the products before purchasing.

Some 9,000 products will be included in the store's line-up, raising some concern among local netizens.  The store's opening could potentially affect local furniture producers, according to some posts,  and negatively impact the livelihood of those working in the industry.  Others hope that the retail giant would include locally-sourced products in their inventory to 

Nikkei Asian Review reported that Ikea had 422 stores in over 50 countries as of the end of August when the retailer closes its fiscal year. It attracted 957 million shoppers and generated $43.9 billion in sales during the 12 months.

You Now Need to Shop at Least $45 at Amazon to Avail of its Free Shipping Option

If you are someone like me who shops on Amazon,com and avails of their free shipping, you will now need to buy at least $45 worth of items before you can have your item shipped for free.  Let me make it clear though that this offer is available only in the US of A or when you ship your items to a U.S. address.

Add at least $25 of books in your cart and all other eligible items in the order also ship free, An eligible item has a "FREE Shipping" messaging on the product detail page, that is fulfilled and shipped by Amazon and contributes to your free shipping order minimum.  The site says the method takes about 5 to 8 business days but per my experience, most of my orders take only five days maximum.  

The online retail giant did not offer any explanation for the increase but many suspect that it's a way to lure more customers to their Prime service.  Amazon Prime offers a free two-day shipping for it's members. Aside from this, the $99 annual membership also comes with free music and video streaming.  Be warned however that again, the free streaming is only available for customers who are in the U.S.  

For more information on this, click here.

For Those Who Want It Small, Here's the LaCie MosKeyto

While browsing the Internet for new gadgets, I came upon an article on an interesting product from LaCie called MosKeyto, an ultra-small USB storage device.  It caught my interest because I like small gadgets and this one is is so small that one photo shows it as hardly noticeable when plugged in a USB port of a computer.  Reading it's specs however, I found out that it may be tiny in size but big in capacities from 4GB to as much as 16GB!

 

LaCie promises that you can keep this plugged in and it will not harm your computer.  It is also compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems.  

I think I will look for one of these in the local stores if it is already available. Amazon.com offers it starting at US$15.33 for the 4GB unit,  US$23.43 for 8GB and US$48.18 for the 16GB model.

(photos from lacie.com)

Shopping for Cars Online @ AyosDito.ph

More and more Filipinos are going online to their shopping.  Nothing can be easier than going online and with just a few clicks of your mouse button purchase what you want.  Then just wait for your items to be delivered to your doorstep.  You can get almost anything from the Internet nowadays; books, electronic equipment, gadgets, etc.  

I recently helped a friend to find car on the Internet.  Though I wasn't sure if we could find one online, we managed to find a site with a good list of several second hand cars for sale.  

The site we entered was AyosDito. an online buy and sell Philippines site who want to buy or sell something online.  We used the search function and we were given a list of units of the brand and type of car we were looking for.  The listing was in order of the date the seller posted his item.  What is good with this site is we were able to limit the search to easily find items in the region where we live.  My friend a fairly good deal and would contact the seller soon.

While on the subject of used cars, there's a post on the web that's worth checking out when you're planning to get a used car.  The site gives a list of used cars to buy and why they offer the best bang for the buck.  The writer also says that selecting from the best used cars to buy will help you save money and may even make you drive the car you've always wanted to have.  Hopefully someone can come up with a similar list for us Filipino used car buyers.