10 Surprising Things You Didn't Know About IKEA

House Beautiful

January 15, 2016 at 3:13 PM

1) The company was founded way back in 1943.

2) The first piece of flat-pack furniture wasn't sold until 1956.

3) The name IKEA is actually an acronym.

4) Each piece is named after proper words.

5) If you live in Scandinavia or the UK, you can buy an IKEA home.

6) Each year, there are more copies of the IKEA catalogue printed than the Bible.

7) It's estimated that one in 10 Europeans were conceived on an IKEA bed.

8) The average size of an IKEA store is 300,000-square-feet.

9) A whopping 1% of the Earth's wood supply is used by IKEA.

10) IKEA was mentioned in three different episodes of "Friends."

1) The company was founded way back in 1943.

For a store with a design aesthetic that feels impossibly modern, it's hard to imagine IKEA existing right around when gingham kitchens came into style. But Ingvar Kamprad who was just 17-years-old at the time, launched IKEA as mail-order sales business that originally only sold small items, like picture frames. Now he's 89 and worth $3.4 billion. Not-so-fun fact: Kampard was actually a Nazi sympathizer in his youth. But he calls that period "the greatest mistake of my life," and even wrote a letter to employees asking them to forgive him.

Getty

For instance, the name of the store isn't actually a Swedish word.

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10 Surprising Things You Didn't Know About IKEA

1) The company was founded way back in 1943.

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