IKEA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

IKEA - Essay Example IKEA helped people make their everyday life superior by offering a wide variety of products in home furnishing in their stores. IKEA is known to offer home furnishings that are designed well combined with great utility, quality and affordable prices so that it suits the pocket of the masses (Funding Universe, n.d). Company History Ingvar Kamprad is the founder of IKEA who started his career in business at a quite young age. He used to sell matches independently to his neighbours, that he would purchase in bulk and made profit out of it. Gradually his business started growing and he expanded it further by selling seeds, fish, decorative for Christmas and even ball pens and pencils which wondered many, back in the year 1935. From his younger days, he had been quite adept in employing his resources. At the age of 17, on the completion of his school, he was monetarily rewarded by his father. With that sum of money Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA. IKEA was derived from the initials of his fir st name and last name which is ‘I’ & ‘K’ and ‘E’ and ‘A’ was taken in a similar way from the name of the village and the farm named Elmtaryd Agunnaryd where he had grown up and was born. IKEA did not start out by selling furniture but instead it sold watches, wallets, pens, jewellery and other things that he bought at a low price and resold it for profit. The year 1948 marked the addition of furniture in its product line. Initially the furniture was manufactured locally and it was received positively by the customers. It was only in the year 1951 when Ingvar Kamprad focused on furniture and withdrew all the other products from its product line. In the same year, the first catalogue of furniture was published and then later in order to make its presence felt in the competition, the first showroom of furniture was opened in a village named Almhult. In response to such scenario, the other manufacturers and furniture stores pressurised the suppliers which led to the boycott of IKEA. This made IKEA to come to a critical decision of designing their individual line of furniture in 1955. This decision of designing their own furniture allowed IKEA to offer the products at low prices and improving the functions which ultimately made the company successful. The idea of flat-packed furniture came to Ingvar Kamprad when one of his employees sought a table to take home but which he could not fit in his car. He then thought of removing the legs of the table and then reassembled it back at home. IKEA started testing the flat pack furniture concept which proved beneficial for the company as it lowered the costs of labour, need of storage space, transportation and also reduced costs related to transport damage. The Lovet table was the first flat pack furniture product that was designed. The flat pack furniture range has gained a wide popularity across the globe as it not only cuts down on a lot of costs but also because the fu rniture is fashionably designed and the designs fit in efficiently and beautifully in the households. IKEA even has furniture that are made of sustainable resources making them environment friendly choice as well (IKEA Fans, n.d). Source: (IKEA, 2010). IKEA Stores/ Branches The first store of IKEA in Almhult had an area of 6700 square meters and had the biggest display of furniture in entire