Despite my best efforts, Ikea’s growth has faltered. Flat sales may look pretty respectable given the collapse in furniture markets around the world. Yet Ikea should be benefiting from trading down, the elimination of smaller rivals and new store openings.

So do Ikea’s sluggish sales suggest that the appetite for minimalist flat-pack furniture is sated? Or is it merely a recessionary blip?

The comments of Anders Dahlvig, the Ikea boss, sounded eerily similar to Starbucks — that other totem of globalisation — before the wheels started coming off a couple of years ago. Both talked of putting the brakes on ambitious store opening programmes — in Ikea’s case in Russia — amid troubling economic climates.

The difference is that while Starbucks over-exposed itself by seeming hell-bent on opening a store on every street corner, the queues at Ikea’s checkouts suggest it is a long way from cannibalising its own sales.

Ikea is facing increased competition from retailers such as Kingfisher’s B&Q seeking to emulate its one-size-fits-all approach to global retailing.

But the biggest worry must be that Ikea will stop being chic and become merely cheap.

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