IKEA History

The IKEA story began in 1943 in Sweden, at age 17 Ingvar Kamprad receives a gift from his father and started his own business. The name IKEA is formed with the initials of his name plus the first letter of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the farm and village where he grew up.

Originally, IKEA sold pens, wallets, picture frames, corremesas, watches, jewelry and nylon stockings, whatever Ingvar thought people might need and offering a good price.

In 1947 he introduced an assortment of furniture in IKEA, in 1951 published the first IKEA catalog, catalog that will become a symbol of the company and its main marketing channel because it focuses directly on furniture at affordable prices.

In 1955 IKEA began designing its own products, pressing competition in the furniture suppliers to boycott IKEA, is forced to design their own furniture in the same year one of the first employees of IKEA came up with the idea of dismantling the legs of a table to fit in a car and avoid damaged in transport. At that time, you start thinking in terms of packed plane. This led to further reductions in price.

In 1958 the first IKEA store opens in Älmhult (Sweden), and in 1963 opened the first IKEA store outside Sweden, in neighboring Norway, on the outskirts of the capital Oslo.

In 1965 she opened the flagship of IKEA in Stockholm, a store of 45,800 m2, has a circular design inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The success created huge capacity problems to attend to customers. When you open the store and allow customers to serve themselves, came an important part of the IKEA concept.
In 1969 he opened the first store in a neighboring country, Denmark and from 1973 was released to open first store outside Scandinavia in the most representative countries of Europe, in 1975 the first IKEA store opens in Australia and in 1985 opened the first store USA, in 1998 IKEA opens its first store in China. In 2000 opened the first IKEA store opens in Russia and 2006 in Japan.

IKEA currently is the market leader in the distribution of furniture and decorative items for the home. It has 231 stores in 24 countries, 45 trading service offices in 31 countries along with 31 distribution centers. The total number of employees at IKEA is 118,000 in 40 countries.

In their stores you can find about 9,500 products such as kitchen and dining accessories, carpets, cabinets, bookcases and chests of drawers, accessories and decoration for bathrooms and kitchens, bedrooms, lamps, tables, summer furniture, chairs and stools, sofas and chairs or textiles.