IKEA is Putting a Stop to Store Sleepovers

Uh-oh, guess this IKEA party’s over.

Ikea

Following a rising trend of teenagers spending the night in IKEA stores, the Swedish home furnishing brand is finally taking action.

It’s not uncommon sight to find customers parking themselves on sofas and sprawling onto beds to test the quality of the furniture before making a purchase at IKEA. Some customers, however, have taken IKEA’s “Open Bed” policy to a whole new level.

In August this year, Belgian teenagers Bram Geirnaert and Florian Van Hecke spent the night in IKEA, and documented their misadventures on YouTube:

Their video, titled Two Idiots At Night in IKEA, garnered over 1.7 million views, sparking ideas for other like-minded youths (seen below). The fact that the Belgian pubescent duo were not caught emboldened other teens. There have been ten reported sleepover cases at the Jonkoping store (Sweden) in 2016 alone.

Sadly, the slumber party’s over. The brand has decided to crack down on these cases, and began by charging two 15-year-old Swedish girls with trespassing.

An IKEA spokesperson told the BBC: “We appreciate that people are interested in IKEA and want to create fun experiences, however the safety and security of our co-workers and customers is our highest priority and that’s why we do not allow sleepovers in our stores.”

Jakob Holmström, another spokesman for the brand, also told Aftonbladet that “We hope that this trend will slow. We do not see what is fun about it.”

This is not the first time IKEA has had to take action for trespassing. In 2015, its branch in Amsterdam, Netherlands, had to ban members of the public from playing hide-and-seek in stores after 19,000 people signed up to a Facebook group that promoted the in-store activity.