The unusual names attached to IKEA products have a surprisingly personal origin. They were introduced by founder Ingvar Kamprad, who had dyslexia and found it difficult to remember the numerical codes originally used to identify the company’s products.
Today, shoppers encounter names such as BILLY bookcase, HEMNES bed and STOCKHOLM sofa throughout IKEA stores. The names may appear to be a distinctive Scandinavian branding exercise, but the system began as a practical solution to a problem faced by the company’s founder.
Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, when he was 17. The company’s name itself is an abbreviation of his initials, the family farm Elmtaryd and the nearby village of Agunnaryd. IKEA initially operated as a trading company before moving into mail-order sales, with furniture becoming part of its product range in 1948.
At the time, products were generally identified by numerical codes. For Kamprad, however, remembering strings of numbers was difficult.
A personal solution becomes company policy
IKEA says Kamprad had dyslexia and introduced product names as a more memorable alternative to numerical codes. Familiar words and place names were easier for him to retain than arbitrary sequences of digits.
Earlier accounts described the practice more as a piece of IKEA folklore. A 2015 report by Fortune, citing the IKEA Museum, noted that Kamprad had described himself as partly dyslexic and explained that names were easier for him to keep track of than numbers. IKEA now explicitly links his difficulty with numerical codes to the naming system.
What began as a personal workaround eventually became a structured system for the entire company.
Rather than assigning names randomly, IKEA organized them according to product categories. Beds were given Norwegian place names, rugs and other floor coverings traditionally received Danish place names, while bookcases were given men’s names. Sofas, meanwhile, were named after Swedish places.
The system effectively replaced numerical codes with a different kind of organizational tool. Instead of asking employees and customers to remember arbitrary numbers, the names gave products recognizable identities that were easier to recall.
From memory aid to global branding
The naming system has since developed into a formal process. According to IKEA, product names generally contain between four and 12 letters and preferably include Swedish characters such as Å, Ä or Ö. They must be real words, be pleasant to pronounce and cannot already be registered trademarks or surnames.
Today, specialist naming teams oversee the process, creating names for between 2,000 and 3,000 new IKEA products each year according to the company’s established conventions.
The system has therefore evolved far beyond the original problem it was designed to solve. What started as a way for Kamprad to remember products became one of the company’s most recognizable features.
A branding story with a human origin
IKEA’s product names are often presented simply as an example of clever Scandinavian branding. But their origins tell a more personal story.
The names were not initially created to make the company’s furniture more charming or distinctive. They emerged because Kamprad struggled with numerical product codes and needed a more practical way to keep track of IKEA’s growing range.
Kamprad died on January 27, 2018, after building IKEA into the world’s largest furniture retailer. The naming convention he introduced has outlived him and become an integral part of the company’s identity.
The Norwegian towns attached to IKEA’s beds and the men’s names given to its bookcases are therefore more than a branding gimmick. They are the legacy of a simple solution to a founder’s difficulty with numbers — one that ultimately became a defining feature of a global furniture company.
Be First to Comment