18 things you don’t know about IKEA

IKEA was on top of list of my visit to Hyderabad last week.. To witness the facts prompted by IKEA as its USP.

Check out my previous blog to know more about Hyderabad- Hyderabad-Travel Guide

IKEA a Swedish furniture retail outlet launched its first Indian store in Hi-tech city of Hyderabad in 2017.

It was first started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad who just passed away on Jan 27 at age of 91.

Ushering through the corridors of IKEA was a wealth of experience.

74 years journey of IKEA is full of wonders. 

Let’s take a look on some of interesting facts about IKEA

1.      Ingvar Kamprad, the founder, at age of 17 went door to door to sell matchboxes, selling fountain pens, cigarette lighters and nylon stockings.

2.      Ingvar Kamprad, world's 8th richest person wore second hand clothes till end of his life 

3.      Ingvar Kamprad was dyslexic so all products were identified with names rather than numerical codes till 2006, as they went international numerical codes were adopted to avoid wrong interpretation of words

4.      Ikea employs more than 160,000 employees, or “co-workers”, as they call them

5.      Ikea products use approximately 1% of entire world’s commercial supply of wood

6.      IKEA prefers to sell make yourself products rather than assembling themselves. They believe that when user assemble by themself they are more attached to it. Last year it distributed 2.5 billion little wooden dowels, which hold its furniture together, and 50 million Allen keys

7. Ikea’s 37.8 billion dollar in annual revenue is larger than the GDP of Serbia. The rapidly expanding company hopes to double sales by 2020.

8.      This furniture seller has bigger capacity of café than any other restaurant in Hyderabad

9.      At IKEA china people get homely feeling as they are allowed to take a nap on bedding and dine at displayed tables and chairs

10.  IKEA showroom are designed as confusing maze: Reason they want customer to make impulsive purchase and not procrastinate purchase, as they will be lost and won’t be able to come back to same place

11.  India is the only IKEA country to have retail, sourcing, distribution, IKEA Foundation and Next Generation within its borders.

12.  IKEA has 48 suppliers in India, engaging more than 45 000 direct co-workers and approximately 400,000 co-workers in the extended supply chain.

13.  In India IKEA has 3 ongoing Next generation projects: Rangsutra, Swaayam Kala and Industree Producer Transform. These are mainly targeting women in the rural areas, providing them with resources and design to create handmade products. Since IKEA connects directly with the women, the largest part of the profit goes to them.

14.  To celebrate their 30th store in France, IKEA made an incredible vertical apartment layout on top of a climbing wall in 2014. The public was invited to scale the prop using safety harnesses

15.  212 million copies of Ikea catalogue have been printed, in 29 different languages, making it twice as widely distributed as the Bible (there are an estimated 100 million bibles either sold or given out each year).

16.  IKEA catalog is made of photos without text as it increases cost

17.  IKEA catalog was 3^rd largest printed copies of book in world till 2014, since digital revolution printing has gone down

18.  There were 110 million visits to the catalog and store apps, leading to $1.6 billion in online sales made in 2016.

IIKEA Hyderabad has more visitors on weekends than people at Charminar.

To know more about IKEA take a personal tour and experience its grandeur.

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