It's actually a shame they don't focus more on perfecting their offerings.
Some items get redesigned too often. Especially the melamine off-gassing stuff referred to by the parent post.
Agreed, last drawer I bought from them I shoved activated charcoal bags in for over a week and left the drawers open, eventually they stopped smelling.
Also the quality of their press board / chip board has dropped dramatically over the years. 20 years ago items in the Malm line were a lot heavier and could survive multiple moves. Last time I picked up a piece of a Malm bed, it felt nearly hollow.
My theory is there is some kind of fashion season progression for furniture, perhaps based on stuff they use on reality shows or trendy waiting rooms or something. That is the "cutting edge" designs (made nowhere particularly noteworthy and using nothing special in terms of materials) at repugnant prices.
I've been looking at Ikea for kitchen cabinets and while there are some shops that'll do comparable quality Ikea has most of them beat on price, drawer hardware, and ease of discovery. I was thumbing through one catalog that had a whole formula to figure out how much your cabinet would cost. With Ikea the prices are right there and they're generally lower than comparable quality RTA stuff from other brands. Plus the warranty is better and installation is less fiddly.
There's just not a lot out there that's just a little bit better than Ikea. There's Ikea and then there's high end stuff.
Ikea sells plenty of real solid wood products, but even their mid-tier chip board book shelves last.
Ikea's light fixtures are also a good deal. Bonus that they don't use soldered in LED lights, which I've seen many cheap and even mid priced light fixtures starting to do.
Ikea's signature POÄNG chair, those things last forever.
Ikea is also often the only place that sells furniture with a clean look. At least in the Pacific NW of the US, my choices for furniture shopping are:
1. Ikea, cheap, quality ranging from meh to decent.
2. Macy's Home store and other of the ilk, horribly ugly furniture with quality ranging from decent to not too bad.
3. HOLY SHIT expensive furniture stores selling good looking stuff like CB2.
4. LOLWTFBBQ expensive furniture stores like restoration hardware, selling ugly ass shit that is of quality ranging from "not too bad" to "pretty good."
Last time I visited Vancouver BC I was very jealous of their furniture stores. :(