Billy the Bookcase

Billy the Bookcase.

As you assemble your flatpack bookcase from IKEA, have you ever wondered why it´s called ”Billy”? If you scan the Ikea catalogue, you´ll see that every product has a name and it´s usually a Swedish name whether or not the rest of the catalogue is in Spanish, Arabic or Chinese. This is because IKEA´s founder was dyslexic and had problems reading long product descriptions. He found that he remembered them better by giving them a familiar one-word name.

So chairs and shelves have men´s names, which explains Billy. Sofas have place names – there´s one called Karlstad, a town in central Sweden. Other terms used are grammatical, musical, nautical or chemistry. Also women´s names, those of animals, and adjectives. There´s a set of knives called ”Sharp”, ”Doze” is a line of bedlinen, ”Forty Winks” is a bedroom blind, ”Stubborn” a spatula and a line of children´s toys goes under the name of ”Well-behaved”. Occasionally, despite great care and attention being paid to the naming of the items, a gaffe is committed. Thus, in English speaking countries,the unfortunate bench christened ”Fartfull” had to be withdrawn until the sniggers had died down and a new name could be found.

Ingvar Kampryd, the founder of IKEA, was born in 1926 on a farm called Elmtaryd near Agunnaryd village. When he started his company he used his own initials and those of his birthplace to create the now world-famous company name. The logo uses this name, IKEA, in blue lettering on a yellow oval which rests within a blue rectangle. It is a strikingly simple and easily recognisable trademark in the Swedish national colours and is now a company operating in 35 countries around the world with over 300 stores, thousands of employees and billions of euros in sales annually.

Yet Ingvar Kampryd started very small indeed in 1943 by buying up matches in bulk and re-selling at a profit. He cycled from customer to customer at first then, when his business expanded, hired the local milk van to deliver goods. He introduced furniture into his range in 1947. It caught on so well that by 1951 that was his sole product. His concept for IKEA was, and still is, to sell fuctional, well-designed furniture at prices so low that as many people as possible could afford them. In order to cut costs and facilitate transport, IKEA was also a pioneer in the concept of customers assembling the furniture themselves - hence the flatpack.

To reach potential customers, IKEA produces an annual catalogue in its home town in Sweden, where they have Northern Europe`s largest photo studio. More copies are printed each year than the Bible - 190 million of them, in more than 25 languages. The company has also produced TV ads,usually funny and very effective but also a number a bit too near the bone or in poor taste which have been banned and can now be viewed on You Tube.

Kampryd himself is probably one of the richest men in the world but has the reputation of being frugal to the point of meanness. The story goes that, if he stays at a hotel and uses a soft drink from the fridge in the room, he´ll go to a local store and buy one to replace it rather than have it put on his bill. He flies economy class , and has often popped into a local IKEA for a cheap meal of meatballs and lingonberry preserve. But his frugality is part of a carefully managed image presented to the public as part of the IKEA concept. He does in fact own an estate in Sweden, a vinyard in France and a villa in Switzerland. But his image took a severe knock when it came to light in the 1990s that he had belonged to a post war Neo-Nazi group for several years. However, he admitted this and said it was the greatest mistake of his life. It didn´t stop the customers coming through the doors and 2009 saw 660 million visits to IKEA stores worldwide.

Despite the present recession, IKEA goes from strength to strength and is constantly developing in innovative ways. One of its recent ventures is flatpack apartments and houses. IKEA is working with the construction firm Skanska and so far they have built over 4000 apartments and houses in 5 countries. Unsurprisingly, following their founder´s original idea, they´ve got names for these,too. The latest ones built in Sothern Sweden are called ”Bags I !” I´d like to bet that most of them have a Billy bookcase in one of the rooms.