David Rosenthal: prediction

Transcript context

…Great retailers have more in common with P.T. Barnum than poor retailers. Totally. Oh my God. I think and Ingvar thinks and he writes this, “This is the very first time anywhere in the world that a mail order business is combined with a physical showroom. ” You might think, oh, Sears in the US. Obviously, yeah. That’s a mail order business. And they have Sears stores. No, no, no. They’re different. The Sears stores, you buy the stuff at the stores and you walk out. It’s not a showroom. Here with IKEA for the first time, it is that concept you just described, Ben. It’s like we tempt you to come see this exhibition that then you order by mail. I don’t think anybody had ever done this before because again, it was a crazy freaking idea. But of course it becomes an enormous success. Within the first couple of years of the Älmhult showroom store—it’s not a store being open—a huge portion of IKEA’s catalog subscriber base they’ve now formalized it as the IKEA catalog, about half of their catalog subscriber base which is hundreds of thousands of people now at this point in time, make the pilgrimage to Älmhult and they visit the showroom. This tiny little village, hundreds of thousands of people are now coming there. And you might ask yourself, what’s the big deal with the catalog? Why are people so interested in getting a catalog? It was really inspirational. It hadn’t quite made the shift yet, but especially in the 60s after Brita Lang took over from Ingvar, because Ingvar is everything right now. He’s art directing the photography. I think he might even be taking the pictures and writing the copy. But it turned into this thing with these vibrant, beautiful living room settings, and people are anticipating the arrival of the IKEA catalog. It positioned IKEA as this brand, this lifestyle. It illustrated a life you could be living if you participated in the IKEA story.…

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