IKEA is a giant furniture manufacturer from Sweden. In Vietnam, IKEA only sets up factories and does not sell products, so some of you may not know them. In 2014, IKEA’s net profit reached 3.3 billion euros. More than 716 million visitors visited IKEA Group stores worldwide in 2014 and over 1.5 billion visits to IKEA.com. Just that much is enough to see how “terrible” IKE A is.
There are many “surprises” and “secrets” about this company that you may not know and here are 10 of them.
Ingvar Kamprad – Founder of IKEA.
Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, at the age of 17. At first the company only sold small products such as picture frames and mail order. By now, Ingvar is 89 years old and owns a fortune of .4 billion.
One funny thing about Ingvar Kamprad is that he supported fascism in his youth. But he considers it “one of the biggest mistakes of his life”, and he even wrote a letter to his employees asking for their forgiveness.
IKEA’s packaging is considered a historic creation.
IKEA’s way of packing wooden furniture into flat cartons was the brainchild of a draftsman named Gillis Lundgren. When he couldn’t fit a wooden table in the center of his car, he decided to remove the table leg to put it in. And ever since then, people have seen IKEA’s packaging as a historic creation.
The name IKEA is a combination of the first letters of the company’s founder.
If you wonder, the name IKEA is a combination of the first letters of the company’s founder, and the location of the first factory in a town in Sweden. The letters I and K are taken from Ingvar Kamprad’s name; the letter E is from Elmtaryd, where IKEA’s first factory was located; and finally the letter A, taken from Agunnaryd, a town in Sweden. It seems that Ingvar Kamprad is a sentimental man.
IKEA products are named with proper nouns or proper names.
Because Ingvar Kamprad is a dyslexic, he often names products with proper nouns or proper names, to make it easier for him to distinguish them. For example, many living room products are named after places in Sweden, while bathroom items are named after rivers and lakes.
The Boklok House was the first “contributor” product that IKEA produced.
IKEA sells a whole house prepackaged in a box, you just buy it and set it up. Prices are similar to ordinary houses. The Boklok House was the first “contributor” product that IKEA produced and was sold in Sweden in 1996.
Every year, the IKEA catalog is distributed to approximately 180 million people worldwide.
According to The Economist magazine, 100 million copies of the Bible are sold or given away each year. But the truth is that it is still lower than the number of copies of the IKEA catalog that are released every year. Every year, IKEA’s catalog is distributed to about 180 million people worldwide in 27 different languages. Above is a catalog published in 1951.
IKEA is extremely popular in Europe.
Just think for a moment and you will know how popular IKEA is in Europe.
The average area of an IKEA store is 42 tennis courts.
This area is equivalent to about 42 tennis courts.
IKEA’s furniture accounts for 1% of the world’s wood consumption.
You may think 1% is not a big number, but think more carefully. IKEA is simply a furniture company among millions of similar companies worldwide, not to mention those that use wood to make something other than furniture.
IKEA appeared 3 times in the American movie “Friends”.
This one may not be clear to many of you, but if you follow the American TV series “Friends”, you will see IKEA appear a total of 3 times in the movie.
In addition to the above, there are quite “secret” and interesting stories about IKEA that not everyone knows:
Billy Bookcase.