Hellenic Business

Representatives for Swedish furniture giant IKEA on Monday said the company regrets removing women from some of the photos in catalogs shipped to Saudi Arabia. The move sparked criticism from government officials in Sweden and raised questions about whether some IKEA franchises can violate values that most company stores abide by.

IKEA's catalog is shipped all over the world, with the company this year expected to publish 200 million copies with 62 different versions. The bulk of the catalog is exactly the same in most markets, but the company has said in the past it tailors the images to suit fashion-related tastes of local markets.

In some cases, however, the catalog is changed to align with cultural standards.

A comparison of the Saudi catalog to a standard version of the catalog showed that several women photographed in the standard version are missing from pages of the Saudi version. Otherwise, the photos throughout the catalog appear to be virtually identical.

The discrepancy was first reported by Metro, a free newspaper in Stockholm. A spokeswoman for the IKEA Group -which handles the catalog for the furniture company- said the move is in conflict with company values and IKEA is reviewing its procedures as a result.

The Wall Street Journal