IKEA (Audio)

1. BGBen Gilbert0:00

   I also got a flat-packed chocolate mousse. [chuckles]

2. DRDavid Rosenthal0:03

   Ooh, hoo, hoo!

3. BGBen Gilbert0:04

   I put it together this morning. It's very easy. It's three pieces.

4. DRDavid Rosenthal0:07

   Oh, moose like an animal, not chocolate mousse like the pudding.

5. BGBen Gilbert0:10

   Yeah, that's correct. It looked really good at first, but, like, the sun rays came in my window, and within, like, ten minutes, it was melted and broke on the kitchen table. [laughing]

6. DRDavid Rosenthal0:20

   Oh, boy. Is there an analogy about IKEA furniture in there?

7. BGBen Gilbert0:23

   I hope not. It was funny, though.

8. DRDavid Rosenthal0:25

   No, I don't think so.

9. BGBen Gilbert0:26

   I'm ready if you are.

10. DRDavid Rosenthal0:27

    I'm ready. Let's do it.

11. SPSpeaker0:29

    Who got the truth? Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Who got the truth now? Hmm. Is it you? Is it you? Is it you? Sit me down, say it straight, another story on the way. Who got the truth?

12. BGBen Gilbert0:46

    Welcome to the Fall 2024 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

13. DRDavid Rosenthal0:54

    I'm David Rosenthal.

14. BGBen Gilbert0:55

    And we are your hosts. When you're running an in-person retail establishment, you know one thing for sure: If people are gonna buy your products, they have to be in your store, and more time in your store generally means they buy more product. So what is a great way to increase time in store? Meatballs, David.

15. DRDavid Rosenthal1:15

    Meatballs.

16. BGBen Gilbert1:17

    Meatballs.

17. DRDavid Rosenthal1:17

    Meatballs and hot dogs. [chuckles]

18. BGBen Gilbert1:20

    And hot dogs. We'll get there. So, listeners, today we dive into IKEA, the company that sells over a billion Swedish meatballs a year and a lot of furniture and homewares to go with it. IKEA is an eighty-one-year-old company. People visit their stores nearly nine hundred million times a year, and it's quirky as hell. If you've ever shopped there, you're familiar with the crazy maze of showrooms. David, I spent five hours inside the Seattle store last weekend. I went there to prepare for this episode. I didn't realize that I was gonna spend the whole day there, but that's what happens when you go to IKEA.

19. DRDavid Rosenthal1:56

    God bless you. Did you, uh, make use of Småland?

20. BGBen Gilbert1:59

    Uh, I went with a friend who had a kid old enough to take advantage of Småland, so yes.

21. DRDavid Rosenthal2:05

    Nice.

22. BGBen Gilbert2:06

    Perhaps you know the relationship test of: Can you make it through IKEA together? And that's just at the store. Then you get home, and you have to assemble all that flat-packed furniture you just bought. But the furniture, it does look good. Even though it's extremely inexpensive and you do have to build it yourself using the funny diagrams with the funny little man and the funny labels, it ends up looking pretty good.

23. DRDavid Rosenthal2:28

    Hell yeah, it does.

24. BGBen Gilbert2:30

    And the results of this crazy stew of ingredients is that IKEA has become the world's largest furniture retailer and one of the largest retailers, period. Today, we'll examine why it has worked so well, how its founder became the eighth wealthiest person in the world before shifting his ownership into a foundation, and how all the little innovations have just added up and refined the concept along the way. So whether it's the Poäng chair, the LACK shelf, the BILLY bookcase, it is very likely that you have something from IKEA in your house right now. This is the story of a mission to create simple, well-designed, low-cost furniture accessible to as many people as possible, taken to its absolute logical extreme.

25. DRDavid Rosenthal3:14

    Totally.

26. BGBen Gilbert3:15

    Well, listeners, after this episode, come discuss it with us on Slack and check out ACQ2, our second show, where we just had Luis von Ahn as a guest, the CEO of Duolingo. His company story is pretty unlikely, given most investors assumed you could not build a large business in either the education or language learning market specifically, and Luis has some of the most practical advice I've ever heard for anyone building a consumer startup and have sent it already to a bunch of friends who are building consumer companies. So go check it out, ACQ2, available in any podcast player. And if you haven't taken the Acquired 2024 survey yet, please do. It is open for another week, and we would greatly appreciate your feedback. Click the link in the show notes or go to acquired.fm/survey for your chance to win some sweet Meta Ray-Bans or an ACQ dad hat.

27. DRDavid Rosenthal4:02

    Ooh, we might need to add a, uh, Poäng chair or something to that.

28. BGBen Gilbert4:05

    Actually, that'd be extremely economical [chuckles] for us to offer.

29. DRDavid Rosenthal4:09

    Yes, it would be cheaper than the Ray-Bans.

30. BGBen Gilbert4:10

    Maybe we'll even throw in some at-home assembly for you and really gross it up.

Episode duration: 3:22:27