IKEA and the Flat-Pack Idea

A teenager's mail-order business

Ingvar Kamprad grew up on a farm called Elmtaryd near the village of Agunnaryd in southern Sweden. As a boy he sold matches, seeds and pens, and in 1943, at 17, he registered a company named from his initials and those two places: IKEA.

Furniture entered the catalog in the late 1940s, and the first IKEA catalog went out in 1951. In 1958 the company opened its first store in Älmhult, a building that now houses the IKEA Museum.

Taking the legs off

Furniture is bulky, and bulky goods are expensive to store and ship. In the mid-1950s IKEA designer Gillis Lundgren reportedly removed the legs from a table so it would fit into a car after a photo shoot. The company realized that if furniture were designed to ship flat, it would take up far less space in trucks and warehouses and be less likely to arrive damaged.

Flat packing became a core principle. Customers would carry the boxes home themselves and assemble the furniture, swapping a little time and effort for a much lower price.

Flat packing also changed the design process. Pieces had to be engineered so ordinary people could assemble them with simple tools, which led to clear picture-based instructions that work across languages. That made it easier for IKEA to sell the same products in dozens of countries.

A system, not a trick

Flat packs connect to every other part of IKEA's model. Large stores on cheap land outside cities, a self-serve warehouse where shoppers pull their own boxes, huge production runs of a limited range and designs that start with a target price all push costs down. The famous showroom path guides people past room settings so they can picture the products at home before heading to the warehouse.

Kamprad was known for personal frugality and for preaching cost consciousness until his death in 2018 at age 91.

The boss lesson

IKEA found savings by rethinking who does the work. Moving assembly and transport to the customer sounds like a downgrade, yet many people happily accept it in exchange for lower prices. Researchers have even described an IKEA effect, where people value things more when they help build them.

Ask which steps in your own business customers might be willing to handle themselves, and what you could give back in price or convenience.

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