David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…Even though Ingvar is focused on quality furniture at the lowest possible prices, the fact that other people aren’t is hurting him because it’s hurting consumer trust. And I can just deliver low prices if I compromise on quality. So he’s searching for a way out of what’s starting to become a pretty brutal competitive landscape. One night, as legend has it, he’s working late with one of his early employees, a guy named Sven Göte, and they come up with a crazy idea. The crazy idea is what if we had a showroom where people could come and they could touch, see, and feel the actual items that we are selling in our catalog, then they could convince themselves, yes, this is the quality, this is the item that I’m going to get at this price. I think if we could just show people they could see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands, they would see that the quality we’re delivering at this price is way better than anyone else out there. And it just so happens at this moment in time that the local furniture joinery in Älmhult is about to close. He is going to buy the building for 13,000 krona which is about $2500 at the time we’re here in early 1950s. So not cheap, but not that much money. That $2500 investment becomes the first IKEA showroom. We seriously kid you not listeners. The only money this guy ever raised was that 500 krona bank loan. It’s nuts. The funny thing about this, it is a showroom. It’s not a store. Our business model continues to be this catalog thing, but we have a place where you can just touch and feel the furniture.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.