Flat-pack furniture (IKEA)
Muebles en paquete plano (IKEA)
- Date
- 1952-1956 · confidence medium
- Place
- Älmhult, Kronoberg, Sweden
- Credited to
- Gillis Lundgren and Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA)
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
IKEA's designers began around 1952 to remove table legs to ship them in flat boxes, and from 1956 designed furniture to be sold disassembled. It cut transport and storage costs and shifted assembly to the customer.
The founding anecdote (the Lövet table, around 1952-1956) comes from IKEA and Lundgren, and flat-packing had been used before (campaign furniture, timber kits). IKEA turned it into a system.
What it led to
- a global self-service furniture business model
- modular design for production with few materials
- the IKEA effect in consumer psychology