People started lining up 21 hours before its opening today.

The City of Emeryville scurried to add road lanes and synchronized the traffic lights around it.

One Bay Area resident is even throwing a party for it.

But one of the most extravagant welcoming gestures for Ikea's opening today is coming from an unlikely source - - Berkeley's small furniture stores.

The Berkeley Furniture Association will fly a 128-foot banner over the Bay Bridge commuter area Friday morning that says "Welcome Ikea! Berkeleyfurniture.com".

Rather than brace for the 274,000-square-foot Swedish furniture giant to rob them of customers, nine Berkeley furniture outlets have banded together to lure Ikea-bound shoppers to their stores. Like a name dropper, they want to gain popularity by associating themselves with the cool new neighbor.

"I know these customers will go to Ikea and say, 'A lot of buzz, but it doesn't meet my needs,'" said Patrick Galvin, president of GALVINS Business & Home Office Furniture in Berkeley. So in March, he rounded up eight other small Berkeley furniture retailers to form the Berkeley Furniture Association in the hopes that if they piggybacked on the hype for Ikea's opening, they could catch some run-off.

It's not likely that a banner and a Web site can override the basic economic principle that a big store offering similar goods at lower prices will steal sales away from a smaller store. Still, local home furnishings retailers say they're not worried Ikea will have a significant impact on their business.

"From a price point and a quality standpoint, we're in two different realms," said Haakon Thallaug, manager of Viking Trader, a Berkeley furniture store that sells Scandinavian furniture. The store carries Swedish upholstered items, but they come ready-to-use, whereas Ikea's goods require assembly.

"We can customize size," said Alex Sahebal, owner of Wood A'Faire furniture stores in Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton, and Fairfield. "We sell quality. We don't just sell the look."