IKEA

**Ben Gilbert** (0:00)
I also got a flat-packed chocolate mousse. I put it together this morning. It's very easy, it's three pieces.

**David Rosenthal** (0:07)
Oh, mousse like an animal, not chocolate mousse like the pudding.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:10)
Yeah, that's correct. It looked really good at first, but like the sun rays came in my window, and within like 10 minutes, it was melted and broke on the kitchen table.

**David Rosenthal** (0:20)
Oh boy, is there an analogy about IKEA furniture in there?

**Ben Gilbert** (0:23)
I hope not. It was funny though.

**David Rosenthal** (0:25)
No, I don't think so.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:26)
I'm ready if you are.

**David Rosenthal** (0:27)
I'm ready, let's do it.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:46)
Welcome to the fall 2024 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

**David Rosenthal** (0:54)
I'm David Rosenthal.

**Ben Gilbert** (0:55)
And we are your hosts. When you're running an in-person retail establishment, you know one thing for sure. If people are going to 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. Meatballs.

**David Rosenthal** (1:16)
Meatballs. And hot dogs.

**Ben Gilbert** (1:20)
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 81 year old company. People visit their stores nearly 900 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 going to spend the whole day there, but that's what happens when you go to IKEA.

**David Rosenthal** (1:56)
God bless you. Did you make use of small land?

**Ben Gilbert** (1:59)
I went with a friend who had a kid old enough to take advantage of small land, so yes.

**David Rosenthal** (2:05)
Nice.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:06)
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.

**David Rosenthal** (2:28)
Hell yeah, it does.

**Ben Gilbert** (2:29)
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 Poeng 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.

**David Rosenthal** (3:14)
Totally.

**Ben Gilbert** (3:15)
Well, listeners, after this episode, come discuss it with us on Slack and check out ACQ2, our second show where we just had Luis Fonan 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 slash survey for your chance to win some sweet meta Ray Bans or an ACQ dad hat.

**David Rosenthal** (4:02)
Ooh, we might need to add a poeing chair or something to that.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:05)
Actually, that'd be extremely economical for us to offer.

**David Rosenthal** (4:08)
Yes, it would be cheaper than the Ray Bans.

**Ben Gilbert** (4:10)
Maybe we'll even throw in some at-home assembly for you and really gross it up.