Ikea bookends10/30/2022 ![]() ![]() Still, sales volumes steadily grew, and Ikea opened more showrooms. When problems with Swedish suppliers came to a head, Ikea moved production to Denmark and Poland. Ikea’s program for inexpensive, mass produced furnishings was greatly facilitated by the development of new materials in the 1960s, especially particleboard and plastics. The Tore Drawers (1958), Regal Bookshelf (1959), and Thonet-like Ölga Chair (1961) were among of the company’s first successes in modern furniture design. The first Ikea showroom opened in Älmhult in 1958. In the mid-to-late-1950s, he commissioned Gillis Lundgren-an Ikea employee-along with Danish designers Bengt Ruda and Erik Wørts, to create new Ikea furniture lines grounded in the modernist concepts of affordability, modularity, interchangeable parts, flat-packing, and self-assembly. Ikea was not permitted to exhibit in the major furniture fair in Stockholm for decades, and suppliers were encouraged to cease working with Ikea. When Ikea began retailing furniture at factory prices by mail order in the early 1950s, the established furniture trade saw this move as disruptive to their business. The first annual Ikea catalogue was issued in 1951. ![]() Ikea launched its first furniture line in 1948 with a few armchairs and tables produced by artisans in the Småland region. In the early years, Ikea did not sell the furniture for which it is now famous instead, it sold a variety of household items, like soap, pens, and stockings, at first locally and then by mail order through print advertisements. The company’s philosophy from the beginning was grounded in a Swedish socialist tenant: “people who are not well off should be given the same opportunities as people who are.” The name is an acronym for “Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd”-Elmataryd being the name of the farm where Kamprad grew up, and Agunnaryd the name of his hometown. According to legend, Kamprad even as a boy had big dreams of starting his own business, and he was able to launch Ikea at age 17 through a small loan from his father as a reward for doing well in school. Swedish mega-brand Ikea was founded by Småland-born Ingvar Kamprad (1926) in 1943. ![]()
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