IKEA's flat-pack was born from a table that wouldn't fit in a car

In 1956, IKEA employee Gillis Lundgren was trying to fit a table into his car. The table was designed as a standard assembled piece of furniture — solid, heavy, and pre-assembled. It would not fit. Lundgren did what any frustrated furniture buyer would do: he sawed the legs off the table so it would fit in the car. He took the disassembled table home and reassembled it there.

Lundgren was IKEA's fourth employee and a key designer. He had already designed the Billy bookcase, which would become IKEA's best-selling product. The experience of struggling with the table led him to a radical idea: what if furniture was designed to be disassembled for transport? He took the concept to IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, who immediately saw the potential.

IKEA began selling flat-pack furniture in 1956. The concept was simple: furniture was sold in flat boxes with assembly instructions. The customer assembled it at home. The flat-pack drastically reduced storage and transport costs — a truck could carry ten times as much flat-pack furniture as pre-assembled. The savings were passed to the customer, making IKEA's furniture significantly cheaper than competitors'.

The flat-pack became IKEA's signature concept. It is the foundation of the company's business model, enabling the global supply chain and the warehouse-store layout that customers navigate with a pencil and a tape measure. Today, IKEA operates over 400 stores in 60 countries, and the flat-pack furniture market is worth over $20 billion annually. All of it started with a table that would not fit in a car.