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Tuesday, 4 January 2005 | Levent OZLER
IKEA Takes Bauhaus to Your House
By Stephen Brown
ALMHULT, Sweden (Reuters) - The design chief of home furnishing giant IKEA was recently asked in China, now home to two of the blue and yellow warehouses selling the Scandinavian lifestyle, if he was worried about being a "design imperialist".
The self-styled purveyors of "democratic design" -- stylish furnishings at affordable prices -- baulk at the idea that they are forcing their view of good taste on anyone.
"We can't force people to go to IKEA, we'll always have a lot of competitors," said Lars Engman, IKEA's global design chief, at company headquarters in Almhult, southern Sweden.
But with 202 stores in 32 countries visited by 365 million people a year and a catalogue running to 145 million copies in 25 languages -- IKEA says it is the most widely-read publication after the Bible -- it is hard to see how anyone could compete.
Its reach is phenomenal, opening in Shanghai, Jeddah and Kazan on the Volga last year, among others. Areas with no IKEA yet -- Japan, Africa, Latin America -- sigh over its low-priced sofas on a website with 106 million hits a year.
So how did a small-town Swede like founder Ingvar Kamprad, a billionaire who travels economy, counts the slices of cheese on sandwiches and knows how many meatballs are served per portion in the in-store restaurants, become a world style guru?
THE MAN IN THE CAR-PARK
Not by design.
After flirting with neo-Nazism after World War Two (for which he apologised), Kamprad started out selling watches, pens and Christmas cards from his garden shed. When Sweden's Social Democrat government launched the "Million Homes Project" in the 1950s, Kamprad saw an opportunity and got into furniture.
He stumbled across the "flat-pack" idea, which saves IKEA a fortune in transport, storage and sales space, when an employee took the legs off a table in 1956 to fit into a customer's car.
Outside the Almhult HQ stands a huge sculpture of the metal six-sided key familiar to anyone who has tried to erect an IKEA bookcase or bed from the assembly instructions.
At 78, interview-shy Kamprad is now "senior advisor" to the family firm run in rotation by his three sons. But he is still "everywhere in the company", spending "hours in the store or in the car park just studying the customers", said Engman.
Swedes say Kamprad is typical of Smaland, the region around Almhult whose people are known as industrious penny-pinchers.
But the company has a reputation for treating its employees -- there are 84,000 of them, known as "co-workers" -- well and invests in education near supplier factories in poor countries.
With its stores brightly painted in Sweden's blue and yellow national colours, IKEA represents qualities the Swedes like to think they embody: informal, practical, thrifty and democratic.
It also showcases the Nordics' gift for practical design, whether it be mobile phones, electrical appliances or ultra-safe family cars. Nordic designers often attribute this to their harsh climate, where survival requires a practical mindset.
The long, dark winters also make them expert at making their homes snug and warm -- skills used by IKEA. "In Scandinavia we have mainly bad weather and have to spend lots of time indoors. So we're good at taking care of our needs at home," said Engman.
NOT FOR THE RICH...
The IKEA museum in Almhult, home to a replica of Kamprad's shed, reconstructs living rooms over the decades to show how the dark wood and chintz of the 1940s were replaced by clean lines, light wood and simple colours pioneered by Nordic design gurus like Finland's Alvar Aalto and Denmark's Arne Jacobsen.
IKEA sees its contribution to design as battling elitism. One slogan was "Not for the Rich, But for the Clever". On its 50th birthday in 1995, IKEA issued the manifesto "Democratic Design" saying the Bauhaus School design mantra from the 1920s, "form follows function", was missing a third element: price.
"...For us at IKEA, form, function and affordability are as indivisible a trinity as faith, hope and charity," it reads.
So the design process at IKEA starts with the price.
"A few years ago we decided we wanted to have a table lamp for 2.50 euros. We started with the price tag. There was nothing about the materials in the brief," said Engman.
This approach has seen sales grow from 1 billion Swedish crowns 30 years ago to 117 billion in 2004.
For future years, Engman sees the minimalist spaces with blonde wood and white textiles long featured in magazines giving way to riots of colour, textile sampling and the "country" look.
Don't be surprised to see IKEA swivel chairs in flowered fabrics from the 1970s reappearing as "retro" chic.
As IKEA grows abroad -- Japan is in its sights for 2006 -- foreigners will continue to be tongue-tied by its Nordic product names and be encouraged to adapt to its idea of good taste.
Concessions are made. "Sometimes we adjust the 'comfort' in sofas," said Engman. "Americans like to sit really soft, Germans like to sit right on top of the sofa, and we are in the middle.
"But we are always Scandinavian when we go out there."
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