IKEA started with a pencil in a shed
A 17-year-old mail-order catalogue.
In 1943, from his family's farm in Småland, a 17-year-old named Ingvar Kamprad began selling small household goods by post. He named the company from his initials, the family farm Elmtaryd, and his village Agunnaryd — IKEA. Flat-pack furniture arrived a decade later, born of a simple problem: a designer removed a table's legs so it would fit in a car.
Editor's Note
Constraint, more often than genius, is the mother of a design revolution.
