IKEA

The company has Swedish roots and maintains the image of the Swedish company in all marketing communications. It was founded in 1943 in Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad .

Ingvar Kamprad started trading when he was 5 years old, he bought matches in bulk in Stockholm and sold them in his small village at retail. The first buyer was his grandmother, who encouraged a young businessman. Ingvar continued trading, distributed goods personally and sent them by mail, then these were pens, pencils, wallets, frames. In 1948, furniture first appeared in the assortment, and already in 1958 the first IKEA store opened in Sweden. The chain of stores began to expand, in 1963 IKEA entered the international market, starting with Norway .

The name "IKEA" is an acronym , and stands for "Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd", that is, the name and surname of the founder and the name of the farm Elmtaryud in the parish of Agunnaryud, where he was born.

Trademark Sale

On January 1, 2012, IKEA resold its brand internally for $ 11.2 billion, with Interogo, a Liechtenstein-registered company controlled by Ingvar Kamprad ^[4] , and IKEA, a Dutch subsidiary of Ikea Systems, as the buyer ^[5] . The purpose of the transaction was called “consolidation and simplification of the structure of the business group” ^[6] , the press expressed the opinion that the value of the transaction is that now the IKEA brand has a very definite value ^[7] . According to Forbes , selling the brand to a Dutch company at a market price by the Liechtenstein company at the moment was beneficial to IKEA: wholesale trade is managed from Switzerland , and the cash register and management company are located in Belgium , taxation in both countries is very profitable. ^[eight]

The modern structure of this company was invented in 1982. The main goal, as explained by Ingvar Kamprad, is to protect the furniture company from fragmentation or resale by subsequent generations of owners. Another - albeit secondary - goal was to optimize tax payments. <...> If I had to express my opinion as objectively as possible, I would say that IKEA is really effective in terms of taxes. ^[9]

IKEA is owned by the Dutch Stichting Fund INGKA Foundation (the parent company of the group is the Dutch Ingka Holding BV).

The president of the company is Mikael Ohlsson. In the list of the richest people in the world compiled by Forbes magazine for 2008 , the founder and co-owner of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad (1926–2018), took seventh place with a fortune of $ 31 billion. ^[10]

Until September 1, 2009, the company’s general director was Anders Dalvig . ^[11] . After him, this post was taken by Michael Olsson.

IKEA is engaged in the design and sale of furniture and related household products designed for the mass consumer. The concept of IKEA furniture is that the majority of the furniture assortment is collected by buyers at home, while goods are also transported in flat boxes, thereby reducing logistics and service costs, which leads to lower cost of goods.

The company’s network of shopping centers totaled 231 stores in 24 countries (at the end of 2008), mostly in Europe ; 273 stores in 25 countries (May 2010); taking into account stores opened on the basis of franchising , the network consists of 325 stores in 41 countries of the world (2013). ^[12]

Today, IKEA purchases goods from more than 1300 suppliers in more than 50 countries of the world ^[13] . Swedwood, a member of IKEA, owns more than 30 furniture and woodworking companies in 11 countries.

As of the end of 2015, the total number of IKEA employees is 155,000 employees ^[14] :

• Europe: 107,400
• America: 20,000
• Asia and Australia: 15,200
• Russia: 12,400

IKEA's total sales for fiscal year 2012 amounted to € 28 billion.

Total sales for the fiscal year 2015 amounted to € 31.9 billion and increased by 11.2% compared with the fiscal year 2014. ^[14]

Since October 2014, IKEA began to sell in its stores in Sweden insurance policies for one of the types of personal insurance - maternity insurance ^{[15] [ significance of fact? ]} .

In February 2016, the company launched the sale of furniture with wireless charging ^{[16] [ significance of fact? ]} .

Product Names

Company product names consist of one word. Most of the names are of Swedish origin. Although there are a few notable exceptions, most of the products are named according to a specially designed system:

IKEA Catalog

The company regularly publishes a catalog of products presented in its stores, distributed free of charge. The catalog circulation for 2008 amounted to 200 million copies of the catalog in 52 publications in 27 languages ^[17] .

Work on the catalog is carried out by the company’s own photo studio, which occupies almost 300 people in 2012, occupying almost a third of the area of ​​the standard IKEA store. Catalog preparation takes up to nine months. Since 2012, for the sake of economy, IKEA has decided to partially replace photographs of interiors and furniture in the catalog with 3D visualizations ^[18] .

IKEA in Russia

In Russia, the interests of IKEA are represented by its subsidiaries. IKEA MOS LLC (Trade and Real Estate) is developing a network of Mega shopping centers , IKEA Torg LLC (represented by offices in Moscow and Novosibirsk) is engaged in procurement, and directly selling IKEA House LLC. The first IKEA complex was opened in Khimki in March 2000 , the first Mega (area - 150 thousand m², investment volume - $ 200 million) - in December 2002, near the southern outskirts of Moscow.

As of January 1, 2018, there are fourteen chain stores in Russia (including three in Moscow , two in St. Petersburg and one each in Yekaterinburg , Kazan , Krasnodar , Nizhny Novgorod , Novosibirsk , Omsk , Rostov-on-Don , Samara , Ufa )

In October 2010, the new IKEA CEO in Russia, Per Wendschlag, said that over the next three to five years, the company is not going to build new facilities, but will maintain and update existing ones ^[19] .

In January 2016, IKEA purchased land for the construction of the largest shopping complex in Krasnoyarsk ^[20] .

In the Tikhvin District of the Leningrad Region, the subsidiary of IKEA - Swedwood-Tikhvin LLC owns a furniture factory, a sawmill and a gluing workshop, built in 2002. In addition, IKEA in Karelia has a sawmill; in the village of Esipovo ( Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region ), the second furniture factory LLC Swedwood Yesipovo was opened in 2006. Furniture suppliers are also companies such as Shatura and OAO VKDP .

September 7, 2016 IKEA opened the largest furniture factory in Russia, the cost of which is € 50 million. It is located in the Novgorod region - in the village of Podberezye ^[21] .

IKEA and Corruption in Russia

The IKEA company, according to its own information, which fundamentally does not pay bribes to officials, has repeatedly faced administrative obstacles in Russia that delay the opening of stores ^{[22] [23]} .

In particular, due to claims by regulatory authorities, the opening of the Mega- Samara shopping complex was postponed from November 2007 (all obstacles were overcome and the complex was opened in autumn 2011). Earlier, in order to open the second Mega in Russia in Khimki near Moscow, the company had to build a transport interchange and donate $ 1 million for children's sports. ^[24]

In Ufa, the construction of “Mega” was carried out from 2005 to 2011 ^[25] with long stops caused by various circumstances: it turned out that a secret communication cable was passing under the site designated for development, it turned out that a foreign developer was at the final stage of construction if there is no building permit, then suddenly everything came up against paperwork from supervisory authorities. The situation was so insoluble that President Bashkiria Khamitov had to contact the Russian government for assistance in resolving it, and Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation S. Voskresensky was appointed responsible for the launch of IKEA stores in Ufa and Samara ^{[26] [27]} .

According to the chairman of the Board of Directors of IKEA Russia, Lennart Dahlgren, the most record-breaking in the world was the opening of the Ikea store in Kazan . In his book “How I Conquered Russia, and She Conquered Me”, he wrote the following:

When I recall Kazan, I can’t drive away from myself the idea that all of Russia could be just as active, open and dynamic. There were no obstacles or bureaucratic delays. Why, in other regions, officials are not doing everything possible to turn Russia into the most attractive country for investment in the world? ^[28]

In February 2010, the company announced the dismissal of IKEA Director for Central and Eastern Europe, Per Kaufman, and IKEA Real Estate Director in Russia Stefan Gross, who admitted, according to the official wording of IKEA, "cases of tolerance of corrupt actions by the contractor." Top managers turned a blind eye to the fact that one of the contractors at the construction of the Mega shopping complex in St. Petersburg gave bribes to ensure the power supply of the facility ^[29] .

In December 2011, it became known that a Swedish citizen, the head of the IKEA Mos (Trade and Real Estate) lease group, was suspected of attempted fraud on an especially large scale and commercial bribery involving extortion. In February 2011, according to investigators, he and two other Turkish citizens extorted 6.5 million rubles from a Russian businessman for renting retail space at the Mega Tyoply Stan shopping and entertainment center ^[30] . In July 2012, one of these Turkish citizens, Okan Yunalan, was sentenced by a Russian court for attempted commercial bribery and extortion on a particularly large scale to five years in prison ^[31] .

The IKEA Family project was launched to encourage regular customers, also operates in Russia. Getting an IKEA Family Card is free. The card allows you to get discounts on some products. There are also discounts on groceries and cafes. In Russia, the card holder receives a free cup of coffee or tea. In some countries (including Russia), IKEA Family Live catalog is issued for cardholders.

Since 2010, in Russia, the company, together with Credit Europe Bank, has been issuing IKEA Family financial cards, which are a payment instrument valid only in IKEA stores.

In March 2007, there was a conflict between the gypsy community of Yekaterinburg and the IKEA shopping center because the poster on the rules for using parking and access roads indicated the following: “Skateboards, roller skates, bicycles and security people are immediately removed from the shopping center as well as gypsies, people with no fixed abode, beggars, distributors of leaflets, hooligans, various informal companies. ” IKEA management removed the poster and apologized, the parties reached reconciliation without going to court . ^[32]

In June 2012, IKEA again found itself at the center of a similar scandal: the company was accused of racism in connection with the ban on entry of mobile homes into the parking lot at a store in a suburb of London. It was reported that IKEA took such measures in order to prevent the gypsies from setting up their camp near the store ^{[33] [34]} .

• In the soundtrack for the movie “ Fight Club ” there is a song called “IKEA Man” (“IKEA Man”) ^[35] . In the film, the main character talks about the fact that he had a mania to furnish his apartment with furniture and things bought at IKEA.

Once we were read by pornography - now IKEA catalogs.

Original text

We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection.

• The developer and publisher of computer video games Electronic Arts has released a catalog for The Sims 2 line of games, entitled “ Ideas from IKEA ” ( The Sims 2: IKEA Home Stuff ) ^[36] .
• In the animated series Futurama , in the 4th episode of the 4th season, there is a parody of a company called πKEA.
• In the video game Grand Theft Auto IV, there is a Swedish chain of stores “Krapea”, which translates into localization from 1C as “figa”, although “crap” in English means the abusive name of feces.
• In the game “Höme Improvisåtion", IKEA cabinet furniture assembly simulator is presented ^[37] .
• In one of the brand’s advertising campaigns, photos were used with naked girls stylized as a pixel image. Initially, these photos did not have the IKEA logo and were confused with the advertising of the Lego brand.
• Belgian director Remy Belvo (author of the film " A Man Bites a Dog ") received a prize at the Festival de film publicitaire de Méribel for an advertising clip for IKEA.
• On June 30, 2016, the brand museum opens in Elmhult, Sweden, the city where the first IKEA store appeared. The exhibition will present not only the most popular and well-known brand products, but also unsuccessful design decisions ^[38] .
• The abduction of Ingvar Kamprad contains the film " Harold is here ."
• In the Escape from Tarkov video game, one of the cards was sent in the form of a room in a shopping center called "IDEA".

• IKEA effect

• Ingvar Kamprad, Bertil Torekul. I have an idea! IKEA Story = Leading by Design The IKEA story. - M .: Alpina Publisher, 2013 .-- 293 p. - ISBN 978-5-9614-2276-4 .

• ikea.com/ru/ru/ - the official site of IKEA Russia