Ikea: Radical Product Designs for Futuristic Customers

Ikea was founded by Ingvar Kamprad (Kamprad) in 1943 in Sweden. Kamprad began in a humble way by selling a variety of household goods right from furniture to pencils and matches. In early 1948, Kamprad began to focus on selling furniture after observing that furniture sales were the fastest. In the early 1950s, Kamprad began experimenting and exploring Swedish-style furniture designs and even naming his furniture designs after Swedish cities, rivers, and other places. Kamprad’s mission was to make furniture economical, to cater to the large number of middle class consumers. Ikea began to work on low margin, high volume sales. Kamprad came up with unique democratic furniture designs that revolutionized the furniture retailing industry. People bought Ikea’s furniture for its contemporary designs, and moved from the standard notion of furniture having to last for many generations..