Hundreds of miles from home in the middle of snow-covered rural Sweden, the last thing I expected to feel was at home

Hundreds of miles from home in the middle of snow-covered rural Sweden, the last thing I expected to feel was at home.

However, standing in the reception of Ikea Hotell, a chic-but-functional hotel run by flat-pack furniture giants Ikea, the surroundings felt strangely familiar. 

It dawned on me that a large chunk of my own furniture comes from the flat-pack furniture giant – and because I built it, I like it more than many other pieces I own. I associate it with a strange sense of achievement.

The hotel was exactly how you might imagine – cosy nooks and crannies, with much the same Scandinavian furniture we have in our own homes.  

I was given rare behind-the-scenes access to the furniture giant which saw me travel to Älmhult, Småland, where the first store opened in 1958.

It truly is Ikea town – alongside the hotel is two Ikea restaurants, design studio, test lab, museum and of course, a store. 

Set in woodlands an hour and a half from Malmö, it has a population under 10,000 and wonderful Nordic charm. 

Here I discovered Ikea’s rigorous testing processes involving robotic wooden buttocks, how its comes up with those furniture names – and why we may no longer need to build its furniture with fiddly screws.

I’d argue that building a tricky wardrobe or coffee table is a good workout, physically and mentally, a sort of Ikea yoga – this innovation may make that redundant.

I also found out that you can have an Ikea themed holiday – ideal for those who really are fans of the global juggernaut which has 410 stores, including 20 in Britain. It recently celebrated 30 years of being on these shores.

Here are 22 secrets and titbits of information I found out on my fascinating trip to Scandinavia…

1.

DIFFERENT GOODS NAMED AFTER CERTAIN THINGS

The names given to products have different themes. 

For example, flooring has Danish names, apparently so Swedes can walk on them, or so the museum tour guide joked.

Other examples, shelves are boys names (such as Billy bookcase), Sofas and armchairs are Swedish districts and towns while chairs are Norwegian flowers.

2.

COUNTRIES HAVE DIFFERENT COVERS

The photograph below may look like dozens of the same catalogue, but in fact, there are little tweaks depending on the market.

For example, in Asian countries, the sofa is a two-seater rather than a three-seater, as that is the norm there, while someone points out that the 2011 cover in Asia also had a toy stuffed rabbit as it was the symbol for year of the zodiac.

Meanwhile, inside the catalogue, the kitchen pictures for example show much bigger ones in North America as they tend to have roomier kitchen areas than elsewhere on the planet.

3.

SCREWS COULD BECOME THING OF THE PAST

Ikea is working on a plan to phase out the need for fiddly allen keys, bolts and screws when assembling its furniture, I discovered while being shown around the design studio.

Dotted around were many examples of furniture designs being tested with a ‘wedge dowel’ system which does away with the need for them.

This system – which is small ribbed lumps that can be easily slotted into pre-drilled holes – will cut down the time needed to make wooden furniture without the loss of ‘structural integrity.’   

You can see how it works below. 

It is looking at ways to adapt its furniture to use it more – currently it is only used in the Regissor and Lisabo ranges. 

4.

IT HAS A HOTEL AND SELLS MOOSE MEATBALLS

If you really love Ikea, there is perhaps nowhere better in the world to stay than the Ikea Hotel, where you can stop for a night to visit the museum and dine in its fabulous restaurant – which is a little less chaotic than those found in store.  

Prices start at around £100 a night and it is located in Älmhult, just an hour and a half away from both Copenhagen and Malmö.

My room rather dramatically looked over a beautiful Scandinavian church and graveyard – and when I opened the curtains in the morning, a dusting of snow overnight made me feel like I was a detective starring in a Nordic thriller. 

Rooms are decked out in true Ikea style, while each floor has a stylish lounge kitchen where you can make hot drinks and chat to other travellers.  

In hotel reception, cork sinnerlig stools (which I have at home), ypperlig coffee tables and vindum rugs are dotted around, immediately making you feel like you are stepping into Ikea world.

Inside the room itself, a poäng chair (part of the Ikea line-up since the 1970s) alongside a varv lamp that charges your phone welcomed me – although the names sound odd, the furniture itself all felt very familiar.   

I thoroughly recommend the moose meatballs in the restaurant. 

The dish wouldn’t have been out of place in a gourmet restaurant, served with a colourful array of winter cabbage, apple and celeriac sauce, brussel sprouts, roasted seed and bacon butter.

It’s excellent washed down with a good beer, while watching the snow fall outside.

5.

YOU CAN VISIT IKEA TOWN

As well as an Ikea restaurant and hotel, Älmhult also boasts the retailer’s first ever store, which was opened in 1958 and converted into a museum in 2016. 

Its exterior remains largely unchanged and it has even kept the same flooring.   

The museum offers not only an in-depth look at the history of Ikea, but also Sweden. 

It was a relatively poor nation at the turn of the 20th century with 25 per cent of its young population moving out between 1840 and 1910.

It showcases Ikea furniture through the decades, showing how our tastes have changed, and bits of Ikea history, such as the desk of the founder Ingvar Kamprad. 

I could easily have spent three or four hours in there taking it all in.

You can even become the cover star and have your photograph taken for your own version of the Ikea catalogue. 

The shop also sells Ikea products you won’t find elsewhere – I picked up a rather natty poster and some little Christmas decorations.

6. FOUNDER’S STORY IS HOLLYWOOD MATERIAL

There would be no Ikea without its founder Ingvar Kamprad. The retailer is named after him – made up as his initials and those of the farm on which he grew up – Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.

Ingvar Kamprad’s story is a real rollercoaster-ride of great successes and troublesome obstacles.

He started out as a businessman from an early age, dealing in goods such as ballpoint pens. 

He eventually settled on furniture and his mantra was to help kit out homes for modern families but at an ‘everyday’ affordable price.   

Ikea started life as a mail order business and 285,000 brochures were sent to Swedish homes in 1951. 

When he opened the first store in 1958, 1,000 people turned up, lured in the by the size of the place – and free cinnamon buns and coffee.

There have been a number of obstacles in the way, including outrage from other furniture dealers, as you’d expect for a major global company.

The museum offers excellent insight into the story of Ingvar and Ikea.  

The book The Ikea Story by Bertil Torekull, which I picked up for a couple of quid in the museum is also an interesting read that explains it all in in-depth detail. 

I think his adventures are worthy of a MacDonalds/The Founder type movie.

7.

FAKE BUTTOCKS IN THE TEST LAB ON SOFAS

One of my favourite parts of the visit was the behind the scenes look at the testing lab. 

Inside was a myriad of tests to put products through their paces before being unleashed on the public. 

In Älmhult, it has 500 separate tests for products, while it has another test lab in Shanghai, China, which has 820 tests.

When I stepped in, there was a robotic arm painstaking opening and closing the lid of a children’s novelty lunchbox. 

It will repeat this millions of times to test how long it will last – imagine how long it would take for someone to do that manually.

Elsewhere, there is a room containing 3,000 light bulbs which are tested for 600 hours.

Again, robots turn them on and off.

Candles are left burning in another section to see how they burn while a giant steel vat sets alight to bedding to assess its flammability.

Inside another part of the lab, pairs of fake buttocks operated by robots, are pushed up and down on chairs and sofas to test how long it will take for it to break, with each push with 100kg of weight.

I wasn’t allowed to take many photographs in this part of the tour, as many of the products being tested are not yet in Ikea stores, but I was allowed to take the video below – it shows a roller going back and forth on a bed, to see how long it will take to break.

The machine will do this for days.

8.

TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED ROOMS

Additionally in the testing lab, Ikea showed me temperature controlled rooms in which furniture, such as bathroom cabinets, is placed to mimic conditions around the world – from humid Asia to cooler North America.

It can then see how furniture holds up in different climates to make sure they have the quality needed to meet these markets.

 

9. IT DIDN’T INVENT FLATPACK FURNITURE

Shock horror – Ikea didn’t invent flatpack furniture, the product it has become synonymous with today.

The founder says that the first company with the basic idea was NK in Stockholm, an upmarket department store that still exists today.

It had a series of ‘knockdown’ furniture, the basic concept of flatpack, in the late 1950s – but Mr Kamprad was the one who realised the idea was commercial dynamite. 

The large driver behind the Ikea flatpack revolution is a designer called Gillis Lundgren – he was able to ‘pull off the legs’ and put them under the tabletop, creating Ikea’s first ever flatpack furniture.

It never looked back.

10. BUILD FROM PRICE BACKWARDS

Ikea has a secret area above its design studios which houses future products lined up to launch at various points of the year – and it stretches far into the future.

I can’t reveal too much of what I saw, but can tell you this: it works on a price point first, before designing a product.

It will have a brief – for example, in the second half of 2019, it might want a new chair to launch.

The price of this chair is set first before anything else is decided. It then develops the product to suit that price. 

Product developers and designers work directly with suppliers to ensure that creating the low prices starts on the factory floor.

11.

IKEA HAS SECRET FUTURISTIC LAB IN DENMARK

In Copenhagen’s trendy Meatpacking District, Ikea funds a futurist ‘laboratory’ called Space 10, which looks to tackle human problems of the future.

Here designers get their head together to find forward-thinking solutions to issues such as housing demands and food supply for a growing global population. 

One such idea is the ‘globe grower’. 

This is a large, wooden construction to enable people to grow their own food in a local and sustainable way. 

Instead of selling and shipping the product to customers, Space 10 allows them to download it on their computer as an open source design.

They can then build it themselves using just a rubber hammer, 17 sheets of plywood, and a CNC milling machine – a commonly-used machine that cuts wood to spec.

So far, 20,000 people have downloaded it around the world – and more designs could soon be downloaded in this manner and then built, using, for example, a 3D printing machine. 

12.

IT HAS A FARMER WORKING IN THE BASEMENT

The lab also has a farmer who grows food in the basement. Ikea is big on food, selling hundreds of millions of meatball per year, for example, and it is keen to help find sustainable food solutions.

We are expected globally to need 70 per cent more food within the next 35 years and in this basement, to the backdrop of classical music, an array of herbs and edible plants are grown using artificial light and with fewer bugs, meaning no pesticides.

They require 90 per cent less water to irrigate, according to the farmer, and Ikea will soon go to the next level, growing mushrooms, tomatoes and chillis.

There is even a fish pond in the corner with the excretion being used as fertilizer.

Upstairs, Space 10 has a development chef that uses all of the produce grown to create tasty dishes for staff to taste test. The next step is looking at how to scale up the operation.  

13.

POLAND IS KEY FOR IKEA

If it wasn’t for Poland, Ikea may not have become the global success it is today.