As Wannberg says, the agricultural labourers of Småland were used to hard work and “eager to help out”.įlatpacks remain at the heart of Ikea. But self-assembly for the people of Småland is a virtuous rite of passage. Sunday afternoons battling with Allen keys have punctuated my fatherhood years: cots, shelves and storage units have all been built with equal amounts of swearing and blisters. One was the car – he realised that the rise of Volvo and Saab would mean families could drive to large out-of-town shops, rather than the high street. Kamprad later said it was the “greatest mistake of my life”. His teenage membership of the New Swedish Movement during the war, which supported Nazi Germany, fails to merit a mention in the museum. He then progressed to selling razor blades, fountain pens and cigarette lighters and, eventually, furniture. “Oh, yes, he was always looking to make a profit,” she says. Juni Wannberg, a beaming acolyte who runs the Ikea Museum, tells me that Kamprad started selling matches for a profit at the age of five. Like all good cult leaders, his childhood is mythologised. A cold corner of Småland, where the wind whips through the birch trees and the skies are low, it is the birthplace of Kamprad. It made contemporary design affordable for everyone.”Īnd Älmhult, in the 1940s, is where this movement started. Many of its best- selling products are what the company call “breathtaking items” – so cheap you can’t afford not to buy them: airtight jars for 75p, a pair of curtains for £5, a bedroom mirror for £1.50.Įleanor John, head of collections at London’s Geffrye Museum, which chronicles the changing interiors of Britain, says: “Sir Terence Conran’s Habitat paved the way, but Ikea penetrated into people’s homes far deeper and in a far more commercial way. They could pretend they lived in a European loft conversion even if they lived in a bedsit in Ashton-under-Lyne. It summed up the company’s philosophy: young couples, living together and going to university in far greater numbers than the generation before, no longer needed to rely on handed-down heavy, dark furniture or second-hand crockery. “Chuck out the chintz” was one of Ikea’s early slogans. We facilitated it – that change from Old England to Cool Britannia.” Some stores even had riots when they opened, so great was the demand for its products. They had already decided to change to modernity. A quarter of a century from the first outlet on a retail park in Warrington, just off the M6, it has arguably changed the inside of British homes more than Thatcher’s Right to Buy or the arrival of the plasma screen television.Īnders Danielsson was one of the Ikea executives who opened the Warrington store and remembers how Britain fell for Scandinavian designs: “We were on a wave and we were on a mission together with the consumer. I’ve come, groans and all, to Älmhult to discover more about Ikea, which this month is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its arrival in Britain. If you prod it a lacklustre way, the pyramid groans in pain. There is a 4ft-high pyramid that emits strange sounds and is meant to sum up the Ikea belief in “togetherness” – if you rub all the sides simultaneously, it makes harmonious music. Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is piped out of the speakers and pictures of Kamprad float on the walls, each with one of his little slogans: “Humbleness and willpower”, “Striving to meet reality”, “Constant desire for renewal”. There is also an Ikea Museum and an Ikea Corporate Cultural Centre.Īnd this – a place co-workers around the world come on a pilgrimage to be inspired – is where the full oddity of the Ikea sect hits you. As well as the first ever Ikea store, there is also the Ikea test lab Europe’s largest studio – where all of the catalogues are photographed an Ikea bank Ikea of Sweden, a separate unit that designs all of the bunk beds, picture frames and bookcases that have made the company such a money-making machine and Ikea Aktivitetshuset, where co-workers can come to unwind at an Ikea spa or at the Ikea bar. Just 8,000 people live in Älmhult and half of them are Ikea “co-workers”, as its employees like to be known. The twin publications are the first sign that this is no ordinary town, but the centre of a cult: Northern Europe’s very own Pyongyang, where the Allen key has replaced the nuclear bomb, and Ingvar Kamprad, Ikea’s founder, is the locals’ Kim Il-Sung. That is because I am staying in the Ikea Hotel, in a small town in Småland, southern Sweden – “the beating heart” of the world’s largest furniture company. In the drawer of my hotel room in Älmhult, there is a copy of the Gideon New Testament and the 2013 Ikea catalogue.
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