Another Democratic Design Day, and IKEA Has Never Been Closer to the Trends — It Seems to Be in a Hurry

IKEA at 75 is going through big changes: hunting for new ways to talk to consumers, and for new sources of growth — sustainable consumption, for one.

On June 7 and 8, the usually quiet Swedish town of Älmhult came alive again. More than 300 news outlets from around the world gathered there, waiting for IKEA to announce its plans for the year ahead.

As usual, a giant yellow-and-white banner reading "Democratic Design Day" hung outside IKEA of Sweden, the company's headquarters building. A snake-shaped bench from the new Överallt collaboration, its sections free to be rearranged, sat in front of the IKEA hotel where the media and other guests were staying. Not far off, on the open ground in front of IKEA's design museum, two shipping containers — one large, one small — held reissues of classic products and a wall of company history. Big white letters were painted across the outside: "1943 - 2018 and the next 75 years: 150 years of curiosity!"

This is IKEA's 75th year. It has just lost its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, and the challenges in front of it have only multiplied: how to attract young people, open new markets, widen its sales channels, and reach its target of 50 billion euros in sales by 2020.

At last year's Democratic Design Day, Inter IKEA Group CEO Torbjorn Loof let it be known that IKEA planned to work with third-party e-commerce platforms. Bjorn Block, the head of IKEA's purchasing arm, revealed that "food will become a business unit on a par with home furnishing." Besides unveiling 11 collaboration collections, IKEA put its focus on the Ikea Bootcamp innovation program and on smart lighting.

A year later, none of those subjects came up again. The event looked busier — two press conferences, nine talks and previews, three hands-on activities — but the agenda had narrowed to two things: collaborations and sustainability.

The first above all. There were 17 collaborations in total, so many that it took two press conferences, morning and evening, to unveil them all: the morning batch will reach the market in a year or two; the evening's were complete unknowns. Peter Van Der Poel, head of the Range & Supply department, stood at the lectern in place of CEO Jesper Brodin — his department's main job is product development, the collaboration collections included.

IKEA would work with Sonos on a speaker system that can be built into different pieces of furniture. IKEA would work with the esports company Area Academy and the 3D-printing company Unyq on a home-furnishing line designed for gamers. IKEA would work with the Berlin social enterprise Little Sun on solar products. IKEA would work with LEGO, Adidas, and Saint Heron, the label run by the singer Solange Knowles — though nobody yet knows what they will make.

These half-finished products, and the collaborations that so far exist only on paper, go by two appealing names: "Prototype" and "Co-creation."

In an interview with Reuters this April, CFO Juvencio Maeztu said that both the size and the number of IKEA's investments would stay high for years to come.

Manufacturing Buzz

"Landing Virgil Abloh as a partner — wow, that's lucky, isn't it?" the host said.

"I'd say that when we started working together he wasn't quite that famous yet, was he?" IKEA design director Marcus Engman said, laughing, from center stage.

At 9 a.m., the crowd poured into IKEA's headquarters. Sandwiches, juice and pots of coffee were laid out on long tables, and reporters started eating and talking. On stage, Engman and the host worked through the products one by one: a promotional video first, then the collaborating designer up for a few words. Eleven collections due out in 2019 or 2020 were revealed in half an hour.

Markerad, made with Virgil Abloh, came second. Photographers raised their cameras, ready — but the star never appeared. In his place came a few paper bags printed with the word "Sculpture," bags that had already circulated widely in the press and on social media.

"Virgil is busy, he won't get here until tonight. In fact, from tonight through tomorrow he'll be here with us, still polishing this collection," Engman said, as though he felt the disappointed crowd was owed an explanation.

Mr. Abloh has been showing up often enough. Last June, when the two sides announced the partnership in Älmhult, he came in person, but at the time Off-White was popular only among a small group of young people — people willing to spend on a hoodie what the previous generation would spend only on a suit. On March 26, Louis Vuitton named Virgil Abloh its menswear creative director, and the 38-year-old designer, until then usually introduced as "Kanye West's friend," suddenly acquired several identities at once: a symbol of subculture breaking into elite taste, a victory over racial discrimination, a trendsetter with a grip on the spirit of the age. TIME magazine recently made him one of only two fashion designers on its list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Since then, IKEA aside, Mr. Abloh has announced collaborations with at least 10 companies: Nike, Sunglass Hut, Equinox, Jimmy Choo, and on. "My job is to make something all of you will like, even though that looks like an impossible task," he told The Wall Street Journal. "That's easy to pull off with a hoodie. With a chair it's much harder."

Only last month, IKEA held a preview for Mr. Abloh in New York of a kind it had never held before. No more than 15 people watched the Markerad unveiling in the room, but more than a thousand watched the livestream on IKEA's website.

IKEA's design process, long thought of as secretive, and 16 unfinished pieces with it, were suddenly opened to the public. Mr. Abloh sat in front of the camera with Henry Most, the IKEA creative leader running the project, and a few people in their twenties, describing how they had gone into the homes of young people without much money to learn what they actually needed, and asking on camera: "What furniture are you about to buy?" "If you had a million dollars, which piece of furniture would you buy?" "Where do you buy furniture?"

This is what Mr. Abloh does best. Every day he shares a design thought or a source of inspiration with his 2 million Instagram followers, by video or photograph: listening to an old album by the jazz musician Kamasi Washington, or sketching in the New York restaurant Jack's Wife Freda with a pen borrowed from the place. People love watching it: the recording of the Markerad preview livestream drew 35,000 viewers on YouTube. One comment read, "Virgil is a god." The press was generous: "IKEA has become more transparent."

As with the preview, IKEA livestreamed this year's press conferences from beginning to end, and the same day uploaded all the footage, in segments, to its own site and to YouTube. Last year's video with Virgil in it has reached 140,000 views on IKEA's YouTube account "Ikea Today," at least 10 times that account's average.

In the new-collection exhibition area on the second floor of IKEA's headquarters, Markerad had the largest booth. Besides the "Sculpture" paper bags shown last year, there was a Mona Lisa light box, a mirror carrying the word "Distortion," a daybed and cushions marked with the orange word "Textiles," and a tapestry made to look like an IKEA receipt. Copies of an "IKEA X Virgil Abloh" special supplement produced by the fashion magazine System were stacked on a table. Henry Most stood at the edge of the booth, ringed by reporters.

An editor from the Korean edition of Elle asked: "Do the two of you find time to meet and talk about the designs?"

"Of course. We can Skype, and Virgil has also come to Älmhult in person several times. Geniuses never tire; they work 24 hours a day. That's Virgil. Aren't these products wonderful? He's very good at making ordinary objects extraordinary — think of coming up with the idea of turning a receipt into a tapestry. The date on it, March 28, 2018, is the production date of the first sample."

"How long did these 16 pieces take to develop?" an American reporter asked, leaning in.

"We started designing last April, put out the first samples in October, and they go on sale next year. That's already fast." A staff member standing nearby added that all the pieces would reach the market in three waves, and in unusual ways — at art fairs, for instance.

Another Korean reporter held up her phone to show Henry Most a new photo from the Instagram account Diet Prada: a side-by-side comparison in which the new chair from Virgil and IKEA looked exactly like a chair by the mid-century designer Paul McCobb. "What do you make of the plagiarism claim?"

The smile froze on Henry Most's face. He paused for two or three seconds, then slowed down: "I think Virgil has his own particular sources of inspiration when he creates. As for what they are exactly, you'd get a clearer answer by interviewing him." Then he strode out of the crowd and caught the arm of a local Swedish reporter passing by.

"Isn't that tapestry wonderful? Let me tell you about it."

"Getting More People Into the Conversation"

"Shutting ourselves in a room and working alone doesn't work. We announce things at the very start of a project because we want more people in the conversation, ordinary consumers included," design director Marcus Engman told QDaily, explaining why IKEA had announced so many collaboration collections it had not yet begun. "IKEA needs to understand how people's definitions of daily life, and their needs, are changing, and collaboration makes that search more efficient."

The same line came up again and again from other IKEA staff and collaborating designers. It is no different from the slogan on the page of IKEA Today, IKEA's newly launched interactive site. "IKEA Today wants to give you a chance to go behind the scenes of IKEA's product development, to experience the projects we're working on, and to see how we create new products guided by the principles of democratic design."

IKEA Today opened accounts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook at the same time, though the attention is somewhat out of proportion to the size and reputation of a company this large: 92,000, 8,366 and 4,633 followers respectively.

The Senegalese fashion designer Selly Raby Kane does not care about any of that; the name "IKEA" is enough. She is one of 10 African designers on the Överallt collection, announced last year and shown in finished form this year. Selly made two abstract paintings and a black basket with elegant curves.

On the morning of June 7, her hair piled into a high bun, in printed harem pants and dark sunglasses, she was livestreaming her booth to her followers on Instagram.

Last February, Selly met an executive from IKEA's Range & Supply department at Design Indaba, a design conference held in South Africa, and the collaboration was settled quickly. "I'm glad more and more people are paying attention to what young Africans' lives look like. IKEA can pass that attention along."

Felix Hallwachs, general manager of Little Sun, also made contact with IKEA at Design Indaba. This small Berlin company has only a dozen or so employees and was founded two or three years ago, the kind of social enterprise much talked about in recent years: it works for a public cause, and every bit of profit goes back into that cause. Besides clean energy, it also works on problems such as water scarcity.

"An organization like ours is still weak at generating its own money. Working with IKEA means the message we want to spread can reach more people, and that matters most."

The 3D-printing company Unyq is also a small New York firm, founded only last year. Designer Lisa Baird told QDaily that when IKEA and the esports company Area Academy came to them, asking whether 3D printing could be applied to a custom gaming chair, the whole office agreed almost without thinking about it. Their first contact was this February. Three months later Unyq handed over its first 3D-printed gaming chair and the app that goes with it.

Yes, IKEA needs these quick, nimble small companies to supply some energy, and the small companies want nothing more than to get their message out.

On the evening of June 7, IKEA held a second press event at the Texo factory, not far from headquarters. This Swedish machine manufacturer, also 75 years old, was bought by IKEA in 2016 to speed up its design and development of automated warehousing systems. The factory floor had been filled with flowers, plants and long white sofas. Neon light covered the stage. A few square bars scattered around served cocktails and soda water. Marcus Engman announced six more collaborations here, Little Sun and Unyq among them.

Still, what drew gasps from the whole room was LEGO and Adidas, even though nobody understood what those collaborations would consist of. The host cleverly put the question first in every segment: "Here I go again — what exactly are you going to make? When does it come out?" And Marcus Engman just as cleverly answered: "Nobody knows. But isn't that exciting?"

An hour later the press conference ended and the party began. A DJ worked the decks and the hip-hop duo Sammy & Johhny rapped. The room was as loud as a nightclub. Outside there was an open-air barbecue: grilled salmon, grilled chicken, kimchi salad, champagne and beer. IKEA staff held up signs at six bars around the space, each with the logo of one of the six partners. "If you have questions, go to the right bar, have a drink and talk!" one of them shouted.

I found Jo, Adidas's global vice president, in the crush. "When did you two first meet? How did the collaboration start? What might it involve?" I shouted over the noise. "Someone we both knew introduced us; it was a natural thing. Our corporate beliefs fit well: making life better." Jo smiled at me, raised his glass, and showed a set of white teeth. A PR person beside him handed me a business card: "Feel free to email later with any questions."

The next day, at another venue, I ran into James Futcher, the creative director who handled last year's Tom Dixon collaboration and this year took over the Adidas and Little Sun projects.

"Nobody knows what's going to happen. But isn't that exciting?" He gave me exactly the same answer.

Has "Sustainability" Become a New Business?

Peter Van Der Poel, manager of the Range & Supply department, announced three plans tied to sustainability: by 2030, IKEA's products will use only recycled materials; by the end of 2019, it will remove all single-use plastic products; and by 2025, it will offer home solar solutions in 29 markets.

Peter picked up a black nozzle. "It fits any model of tap, saves 50% of the water, and costs only a few euros."

IKEA's sales growth is still slowing. To meet the target it announced earlier, 50 billion euros in sales by 2020, IKEA needs to keep sales growing by an average of 10% a year. In fiscal 2017 its global retail sales came to 34.1 billion euros, growth of just 4%, lower even than 2016's 7.1%. Net revenue was only 30 billion euros, and operating profit fell from $4.5 billion to $3 billion, the result of IKEA selling off some of its product and supply-chain businesses.

One way to deal with this is to enter new markets. "We'll open a new store in India in July. This year we're also going into South America — Chile, Colombia and Peru," Peter Van Der Poel told QDaily. On expanding online he was as cautious as CEO Brodin: "We still prefer our own website to partnering with third parties. We need to make sure things like logistics are ready, then expand step by step." In April, Brodin told reporters that IKEA would bring a new online platform and ordering model to all markets by February 2019.

Sustainability is seen as a new way to push sales growth — if consumers are willing to use the same piece of furniture over and over, and to come to IKEA every time for a replacement sofa cover, new table or chair legs, a furniture repair, or assembly at home.

More important, sustainability holds more appeal for younger consumers, and a sense of ethics, now a required part of marketing, is getting more and more attention.

"There's a large business opportunity in this. What we invest most in is material innovation. Recycled materials actually cost less, which lets us widen our margins while keeping prices low," Lena Pripp-Kovac, IKEA's sustainability program manager, told QDaily.

IKEA showed two new materials developed with Neste. They look like ordinary plastic boxes, but the plastics they use are made from carbon dioxide and waste vegetable oil respectively.

Cutting costs by developing recycled materials while widening home services to find new growth means more spending up front. "On certain questions, we need to get faster and faster," Torbjorn Loof said.

Cover image courtesy of IKEA; the rest are on-site photographs.