IKEA

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).

Inter IKEA Systems B.V.

Company type	Private
Industry	Retail
Founded	28 July 1943; 82 years ago (1943-07-28)[1] in Sweden
Founder	Ingvar Kamprad
Headquarters	Delft, Netherlands
Number of locations	445 (2021)[2]
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)[3] Jon Abrahamsson Ring (chairman and CEO of the Inter IKEA Group)[4]
Products	Ready-to-assemble furniture, homeware, food products
Revenue	€41.3 billion (FY 2019)[5]
Website	about.ikea.com www.ingka.com Retail page www.ikea.com

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).