Ikea
...s difference. Kamprad, who grew up poor during that period, was struck by the notion that beautiful things should not be limited solely to the well to do, but should be available to everyone. With that appropriately egalitarian sentiment in mind, in 1950 he decided to add a line of well-designed, functional home furnishings to his list of farm products. They were an immediate hit. To expand the territory he could cover, Kamprad soon added a catalogue, and then a showroom. By 1955, as Scandinavian-designed furniture was beginning to enjoy a worldwide reputation, IKEA began designing its own furnishings. The first IKEA retail store opened in 1958 in Almhult, a village not far from Kamprad’s boyhood home. By 1965, when IKEA opened its first store in Stockholm, a 450,000 square foot behemoth, thousands queued for a chance to sample the wares. While those in the Scandinavian design community embraced Kamprad’s ideals of furniture that is aesthetically meaningful and available to a wide, non-elite market, it was not until the post-war period that its members began turning out the designs that would win such prestigious international competitions as the Milan Triennale. The international acclaim led the Scandinavian countries to market their home furnishings seriously to the world at large. By this time, furniture and household decorative arts that used simple, unadorned, geometric forms had become known as Scandinavian design. Company operations: tactics and strategy The problem with Scandinavian design, however, was that it was still too expensive for the average consumer. As a result, several attempts to market Scandinavian furnishings beyond Sweden’s borders failed. Bonniers, the Swedish chain, and Design Research in the United States both came and went in the 1960s and 1970s. And today (the early 2000s), Scandinavian furniture is still very much an up-scale, niche market. But Kamprad, convinced that there was a broad, as yet un-served middle class that would want this beautiful furniture if it were reasonably priced, set out to cut his costs to the bone. In 1997 a line of children’s furniture and toys was added. Price had been the key competit...