KUALA LUMPUR, July 6 — What started out as a hobby collecting fun ideas to customise IKEA products became so big that the Swedish furniture giant threatened a lawsuit against Ipoh-born Jules Yap over trademark violation.

That is before an army of fans and those from the online community protested and even called the world’s largest furniture retailer, a big bully.

In 2006, Yap, also known as the IKEA Hacker, was researching ideas for her own apartment and noticed that innovative IKEA hacks were scattered on different web sites and forums.

The life of the IKEA Hacker started on the free blog publishing service, blogspot.com. But traffic grew so rapidly that Yap had to buy a domain name, www.IkeaHackers.net, just to cope.

Three years later, she quit her job as a copywriter after being in the advertising industry for 15 years and became the IKEA Hacker, full time.

Her web site draws an average of 30,000 visitors each day, but since news broke three weeks ago that IKEA is threatening a lawsuit, the figure hit 458,000 visitors on one day.

Because of the overwhelming support she got from the online community, IKEA and Yap are discussing the best way to handle the situation. At the moment, she is still allowed to use her site without making any changes.

In her own words: