IKEA

Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
Type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	28 July 1943; 80 years ago in Sweden
Founder	Ingvar Kamprad
Headquarters	Delft, Netherlands
Number of locations	445 (2021)
Area served	Europe, Middle East, North Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, North America
Key people	Jesper Brodin (chairman and CEO of INGKA Holding); Jon Abrahamsson Ring (chairman and CEO of the Inter IKEA Group);
Products	Ready-to-assemble furniture, homeware, food products
Revenue	€41.3 billion (FY 2019)
Website	about.ikea.com; www.ingka.com; Retail page www.ikea.com

IKEA is a multinational furniture company that was founded by Ingvar Kamprad, from Sweden. The name IKEA is an acronym from the name Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd (the farm where he grew up), and Agunnaryd (his hometown in Småland, southern Sweden).

An IKEA store in Minnesota.

An IKEA store and parking lot in Finland.

An IKEA store in Cerny Most, Prague.

History

Map of countries with IKEA stores: Current market locations Future market locations Former market locations No current or planned market locations

The company was started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad (1926-2018) when he was seventeen years old as a mostly mail-order sales business. ^[6]From the beginning, the company was selling items such as pens, picture frames, clocks, jewellery, nylon stocking, wallets and whatnot. After an order, Kamprad would often deliver it himself. By 1947 it started selling furniture and by 1958 the first IKEA store was opened in Älmhult, Småland. The first stores outside Sweden were opened in Norway (1963) and Denmark (1969). The stores spread to other parts of Europe in the 1970s, with the first store outside Scandinavia opening in Switzerland (1973), followed by West Germany (1974).

IKEA Media

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad (right) shakes hands with Hans Ax, IKEA's first store manager, in 1965.
Interior of an IKEA store in Hong Kong
The self-service warehouse area
IKEA store in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
As-is area at IKEA Damansara, Malaysia
IKEA at Mall Taman Anggrek, Jakarta
The first US Planning Studio located in Manhattan, United States, in 2019, which closed in January 2022
Hotdogs after shopping...