Ikea

Introduction :

Ikea furniture is a true success story. Ingvar Kamprad founded Ikea in 1943, an international home products retailer specializing in flat pack furniture. Ikea is now the largest furniture manufacturer in the world. The word Ikea is just the acronym of Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd represent the name of his parent’s farm and Agunnaryd is the name of his origin’s village (“Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd”). The first Ikea store was opened in Sweden in 1958. The first stores outside Sweden were opened in Norway in 1963 and in Denmark in 1969.

Newer, Ikea stores are usually very large blue buildings with few windows and yellow accents (the company's colors are also the national colors of Sweden). They are often designed around a "one-way" layout which leads customers along "the long natural way". This layout is designed to encourage the customer to see the store in its entirety (as opposed to a traditional retail store) although there are often shortcuts to other parts of the showroom. The sequence first involves going through furniture showrooms making note of selected items. So, Ikea appears as the first furniture seller in the world.

I. Presentation of the company:

a) History

The IKEA story begins in 1926 when founder Ingvar Kamprad is born in Småland in southern Sweden. He is raised on 'Elmtaryd', a farm near the small village of Agunnaryd. Even as a young boy Ingvar knows he wants to develop a business.

1940s-1950s

The roots of a furniture dealer. Ingvar Kamprad is entrepreneurial in developing IKEA into a furniture retailer. This period sees the exploration of furniture design, self assembly, advertising, the use of a catalog and a showroom to reach the many people.

1960s-1970s

The IKEA concept starts to take shape. New IKEA stores open and hero products are developed such as POÄNG and BILLY bookcase. It is a time where concept takes shape and is documented in Ingvar Kamprad's The