Think you know everything about...

FURNITURE STORE IKEA

1 Ikea was founded in 1943. Rank the following milestones in order of how soon it was before they occurred: A. The first flatpack product. B. The first UK store. C. The first IKEA restaurant. 2 WhIch one of these things has Ikea NOT achieved? A. More than a billion visits last year. B. More copies of the Ikea catalogue printed every year than the Bible. C. It consumes about 1 per cent of all the world’s wood and cotton. D. Half of all children in Europe are conceived on an Ikea bed. 3 TRUe or false? British designer Tom Dixon was blocked from producing an

Ikea coffin. 4MaTch the Ikea fact to the correct country: 1. Customers nap in the store. 2. Customers buy Ikea vases as tumblers. 3. Customers dressed up as Ikea products to win prizes. 4. Thousands turned up to play hide-and-seek in an Ikea store. Cool: An iKEA bookcase and (right) the store’s blue bag A. Malaysia B. China C. Netherlands D. United States 5TRUe or false? customers value a piece of furniture less if it is flat-pack. 6 MaTch the Ikea product to the relevant figure: 1. The IKEA meatball 2. The Billy bookcase 3. The IKEA pencil A. 12 million annually consumed in the UK. B. More than 4.5 million consumed worldwide every year. C. 1 billion consumed annually worldwide.

ANSWERS

1) A. In 1956, the first Ikea flatpack product was born after the designer of the Lövet coffee table cut off its legs to fit it into his car.

C. tHE first Ikea restaurant opened in its first store, in Älmhult, sweden, in 1959. But the famous meatballs did not arrive until 1983.

B. tHE first UK branch was opened in Warrington, Cheshire, in 1987. 2) D. It Is, in fact, reported that one in ten Europeans is conceived in an Ikea bed, but no one seems to know where the figure came from.

3) TRUE. tHE designer’s pitch was a cot that could be turned into a coffin but, he says, ‘they thought that was inappropriate’. 4) 1B, 2D, 3A, 4C. 5) FALSE. In FaCt, we place a greater value on furniture we construct ourselves, according to the Journal of Consumer Psychology. 6) 1C. IKEa sells 1 billion meatballs a year globally and has sold well over 12 billion to British customers since 1987. 2B. tHE Billy bookcase is so ubiquitous that financial news service Bloomberg uses it to compare purchasing power across different countries. 3A. PEnCILs are actually where the company started. Long before Ikea made furniture, it sold stationery, pipes and postcards through its mail- order catalogues.