John McDonald turned from screenplays to cabinetmaking, opening a custom cabinet shop in Duarte, California. But it was his venture selling high end cabinetry doors matched precisely to IKEA's catalog that made him a star. Hear his story March 22 as he leads off Cabinets & Closets 2016 in Pasadena, California March 22-24.

Siding with the Obama Administration, IKEA says it is 'all in' for climate action, pledging at a White House summit on renewable energy and sustainable sourcing and standing with the Obama Administration at the upcoming COP21 Paris climate negotiations.

IKEA, which has been researching the tiny home movement, may be nearing launch of a movable system of sliding room divider panels. Products, which would likely use sliding hardware, are aimed at rapid repurposing of living quarters in multi-unit homes, where square footage in apartments and condominiums continues to decline.

The FurniQi RTA side table, with Qi wireless charging technology, is made from hand-harvested Mao Zhu bamboo and is expected to launch in October.

Four things to watch: Pay rates will be pressured upward, as firms add benefits, base pay rises at retailers, and White House executive orders mandate increases. With 215,000 new jobs added in July, expect more competition for workers. Also on the watch: upward pressure on lumber and panel prices by housing's recovery, and now, with the EPA plan mandating CO2 reductions, U.S. utilities could follow Europe's elad and burn CO2 neutral wood chips - competing with MDF, plywood and OSB for raw material.

IKEA is raising the minimum hourly wage for its workers to $11.87, up 10 percent from $10.76 current minium. U.S. workers for the Swedish furniture giant will average $15.45. In June 2014 IKEA boosted pay 17 percent.

Residential furniture retailer IKEA and IDEO, a global design firm, along with a group of 50 students from Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre at Lund University in Sweden and the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, teamed up to design the kitchen of the future that includes a wooden table with electronics and induction cooking coils embedded.

In HOMAG City, the HOMAG Group was presenting integrated solutions, from a compact workshop over an area of 1,000 square feet, up to a fully networked Batch Size 1 system with a length of 900 feet – including automation, software and IKEA Wedge-Dowel.

Mastercraft Furniture Inc. filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Monday. The upholstery manufacturer blamed a dispute with a glue vendor for the filing.

IKEA cabinets outranked Thomasville, Armstrong, and Diamond cabinets , to earn JD Powers highest customer satisfaction rating for the second year in a row.