IKEA furniture is awesome. It's inexpensive, stylish, compact when you buy it, and easy to put together (at times). This mammoth world-wide furniture chain was established during the 1940's in none-other than Sweden. It's master mind was Invgar Kamprad.
Invgar was 17 years old at the time. He named his experiment 'IKEA', which was formed from his initials (I.K.) plus the first letters of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the farm and village where he grew up. Initially, IKEA sold pens, wallets, picture frames, table runners, watches, jewelry and nylon stockings. Soon after, Invgar started printing a catalogue. For God's sake he used to distribute products using the country milk van. Hey, when you're motivated, you're motivated.
It has been six decades since IKEA began in a small farming village in Sweden. Throughout these six decades IKEA has gone from the woods of southern Sweden to twenty-nine countries in the world. Here are some stats (taken from http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/facts_and_figures/index.html):
Number of Slaves: 127,800
Number of Stores: 232 in over 44 countries.
Target Market: 25-40 yr olds living in large urban areas and earning an average income.
2008 Sales: 21 billion Euros
Top 5 sales countries: Germany, USA, UK, France, and Sweden.
Number of Catalogues printed in 2008: 200 million
What about it's products?
IKEA furniture is stylish because it's modern. The fact that buyers have to self-assemble much of the furniture allows IKEA to reduce costs on labour and packaging. Much of what they sell can be called "democratic design" because it uses an integrated approach to manufacturing and design. This company has mastered economies of scale (bad memories of ECON 101?). They claim this allows them to have flexible, adaptable home furnishings, scaleable both to large and smaller homes. The most commonly bought items at IKEA include:
- Furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage
- Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture
- Dining tables, chairs and desks
- Bookcase ranges
- Bathroom accessories
- Kitchen materials
Now let's get to the fun stuff. Interesting facts about IKEA:
- When an IKEA opened in April 2000 in Emeryville, California, the traffic was so severs that most local traffic lights were rendered useless. Emeryville police were forced to manually direct traffic daily for three months.
- When the Soughton, Massachusetts store opened in 2005, highways were at a standstill. Approaching the store from less than 1 mile took upwards of an hour.
- An ad was aired where a management consultant suggests how much more furniture the company could buy if it fired an office worker.
- The founder, Ingvar Kamprad, was involved in the pro-Nazi Swedish movement during his teens. This caused tensions when IKEA began opening stores in Israel.
- Canadians became upset with IKEA when a TV station discovered that IKEA charged as much as twice the price in their Canadian stores for the same items sold in their American stores.
