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IKEA

Company

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IKEA owns one of the world's largest retail chains selling furniture and household goods.

Owners:
Ingka Group
Revenue and Net Profit billions €

Number of employees

Assets

Owners

+ IKEA

IKEA ("IKEA," also sometimes pronounced "Ikea") is a Dutch company (has Swedish roots). Full name - IKEA International Group. Headquarters - in the city of Delft, province of South Holland.

The company is engaged in the design and sale of furniture and related household goods designed for the mass consumer. The concept of IKEA furniture is that most of the furniture range is assembled by buyers on their own, and goods are also transported in flat boxes, thereby reducing logistics and service costs, which leads to a lower cost of goods.

Owners

IKEA is owned by the Dutch Stichting INGKA Foundation (the parent company of the group is the Dutch Ingka Holding B. V.).

The president of the company is Mikael Ohlsson. In the list of the richest people in the world, compiled by Forbes magazine for 2008, the founder and co-owner of IKEA Ingvar Kamprad ranks seventh with a fortune of $31 billion.

Until September 1, 2009, Anders Dalwig was the CEO of the company. After him, this post was taken by Mikael Ohlsson.

Aktivs

As of September 2014, IKEA Group of Companies owns 305 stores in 26 countries.

IKEA purchases goods from more than 1,300 suppliers in more than 50 countries around the world. Swedwood, part of IKEA, owns more than 30 furniture and woodworking enterprises in 11 countries around the world.

Performance indicators

2017: IKEA attributed falling profits to online trading investment

Home goods retailer IKEA announced a one and a half-fold decrease in operating profit in fiscal 2016-2017. Vedomosti wrote about this in December 2017. The figure fell one and a half times from 4.5 to 3 billion euros. According to the company, the decline in profits occurred in the context of business restructuring with the sale of assets and investments in online trading.

The volume of IKEA goods sold via the Internet increased by 28% and took 20% in total sales. In particular, in Russia, in 2017, the network opened online trading in many regions, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. It was reported that by the end of the year, Internet sales will work in all Russian regions of the retailer's presence.

IKEA's total revenue in fiscal 2017 increased by just 1.7% to €36.3 billion. Of these, sales of goods amounted to 34.1 billion, income from rental of space in shopping centers - 1 billion. Russia accounted for 4% of retail revenue.

2014

IKEA's revenue in the 2013-2014 financial year/from September 1, 2013 to August 31, 2014/amounted to 28.7 billion euros.

Business in Russia

Main article: IKEA Russia

History

2022: Investigation into the use of Belarusian prisoners by the company

IKEA has been using the work of Belarusian prisoners for many years, as French and German journalists told in a joint investigation in November 2022. The Swedish company purchased wood, furniture parts and textiles from Belarusian suppliers, which were produced in correctional colonies. Journalists associated the monitored prisons with torture, kidnapping, as well as the exploitation of child labor.

IKEA has been cooperating with Belarus since 1999. During this time, the country became one of the largest exporters of wood. The Ministry of Internal Affairs of the republic does not hide the fact that more than eight thousand prisoners work on sawmills in the country - this is a developed industry.

2021

Phishing attacks through compromised Microsoft Exchange servers

At the end of November 2021, phishing attacks through hacked Microsoft Exchange servers hit IKEA. Attackers send malicious emails to the retailer's subsidiaries, as well as its partners.

According to BleepingComputer, hackers use stolen emails with a chain of answers and respond there with links to malicious documents that install viruses on recipients' devices.

IKEA hit by phishing attacks through hacked Microsoft Exchange servers

Because response chain emails are legitimate emails from the company and are typically sent from hacked email accounts and internal servers, recipients will trust the email and are more likely to open malicious documents.

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A cyber attack on Inter IKEA mailboxes continues. Other IKEA organizations, suppliers and business partners are under the same attack. Malicious emails continue to be sent to individuals at Inter IKEA, says the letter, which the company sent out on its corporate network.
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IKEA IT experts report that such malicious emails contain links with seven numbers at the end, and give an example of such a message. Currently, employees are advised not to open emails at all, regardless of the sender, and immediately report any suspicions to the IT department.

By November 29, 2021, the scale of the cyber attack was not reported. It is also unknown how many computers the attackers managed to infect with viruses.

Bleeping Computer at the end of November 2021 recalled that recently Trend Micro specialists warned about such attacks. Attackers are hacking Microsoft Exchange servers around the world to gain access to their messaging capabilities and send malicious emails to customers and employees of companies, experts wrote.[1]

Fine of 1,000,000 euros for mass surveillance of visitors and employees

IKEA was fined 1,000,000 euros for mass surveillance of visitors and employees. This became known on June 16, 2021.

Its former head, Jean-Louis Bayot, was sentenced to two years probation and fined 50 thousand euros.

The scandal began in March 2012, when the French magazine Le Canard enchaine published correspondence between IKEA France employees and detective agencies. It follows from it that IKEA France, through the mediation of agencies, bought information about its employees from police databases, especially about trade unionists, as well as clients who filed complaints against the company. For each request they paid 80 euros, in total about 200 requests are known. French police raided the company's headquarters in the commune of Pleasir, during which documents were seized.

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It's about protecting our privacy from the threat of mass surveillance, "she said in March as the process began.
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The court concluded that IKEA used the services of the private company Eirpace, which in turn received personal data from police officers. During the trial, it was found that one of the top managers repeatedly sent lists of employees' names to private detectives to check their activities, including their political views and trade union activities.

Other defendants were partially found guilty of illegally obtaining personal data, they received various punishments: from a fine of €5,000 to suspended imprisonment.

The parent company in Sweden denied creating a espionage system. The court released her from liability, as IKEA works with franchises, and the French Ingka Group, the main franchisee of the brand in the country[2].

Price differences for the same products in different countries

As of 2021

2020

Purchase of Geomagical Labs Virtual Room Software Developer

IKEA bought Geomagical Labs, a startup developing augmented reality technologies. Geomagical is developing a solution that will allow a smartphone camera to scan a room and create a virtual copy of it in a mobile application, while removing all existing furniture in this reconstruction. Read more here.

IKEA began to compensate for the time of travel to the store with a discount on the product

In mid-February 2020, IKEA Dubai is running a campaign that will allow customers to exchange travel times to the store for discounts. To do this, they just need to show IKEA checkout employees Google Maps' movement history, which shows how much time they spent getting to the IKEA store.

This new campaign, timed to coincide with the opening of a new store in Jebel Ali and called Buy With Your Time, encourages potential customers to visit IKEA stores more often and spend more time in them, which means they buy more goods. Usually customers spend too much time travelling to IKEA stores, as these stores are often on the outskirts of town. In this regard, IKEA offered customers to convert time into "money" - the further the buyer lives, the longer he traveled to the IKEA store, the greater the bonus. It is known that an hour of road can be turned into a discount of 105 dirham ($28), and in a five-minute trip to the store you can get a free vegetarian hot dog.

IKEA Dubai Launches Campaign That Will Allow Customers to Trade Travel Times in Store for Discounts
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Before starting this campaign, we realized two things: time is valued very dearly today, and many loyal IKEA customers spend many hours visiting our stores, which are often away from the city center, "said an IKEA representative. - We think it's right to reward our customers only for the time they've spent getting to us. This is our way of helping the people of Dubai benefit the most from every minute.
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The company did not announce plans to scale the stock to other countries. Of course, the really important aspect is not the exchange of time for discounts, but rather the involvement of Google Maps in the advertising campaign. People are willing to let Google track their movements, provided they get "free stuff" in exchange. But it is not yet clear whether this deal is fair.[3]

2018: Online Sales Development

As it became known in early 2018, IKEA, a furniture retailer, announced an update to its tactics, in which the company developed a mainly offline sales system. It will now be possible to purchase furniture of the Swedish brand not only through the branded online furniture store, but also large online trading platforms, for example, Amazon and Alibaba.

IKEA was forced to switch to this type of sales due to the growing trend of ordering things on the Web. At the same time, sales in large malls of the company are significantly declining. The reason is mainly the saving of time among buyers for long trips and walks in shopping centers.

In addition, the owners of the Swedish retailer intend to bring IKEA goods closer to the buyer: soon small IKEA shopping centers and points of issue of orders purchased via the Internet may open in large cities.[4]

2013

Catalog with augmented reality tools

In August 2013, Ikea, a well-known furniture and home goods company, announced a new catalog for 2014, which will use augmented reality augmented reality. A mobile application has been specially created for the Ikea 2014 catalog, which will allow you to "try on" pieces of furniture for the furnishings of a real room.

To work with the application, you need a smartphone or tablet equipped with a camera. By pointing the front camera at the catalog, and then at the space of a specific room, users will result in an image on the screen, where the item of furniture of interest will be accurately inscribed in the interior, and proportionally scaled and presented in the desired user and selected color.

Thus, users will be able to get more visual information in order to decide on the purchase of a particular thing, the company expects. The app will be available in dedicated app stores for Android and iOS platforms starting August 25, 2013.

325 stores in 41 countries including franchising

Taking into account stores opened on a franchise basis, the chain consists of 325 stores in 41 countries of the world (2013).

2012

Sales of 28 billion euros

IKEA's total sales for fiscal year 2012 amounted to 28 billion euros.

Resale brand within the group

On January 1, 2012, IKEA made a domestic resale of its brand for $11.2 billion, with the seller being Interogo, a company registered in Liechtenstein, controlled by Ingvar Kamprad, and the buyer being IKEA's own subsidiary, Dutch Ikea Systems. The purpose of the transaction was called "consolidation and simplification of the structure of the business group," the press expressed the opinion that the significance of the transaction is that now the IKEA trademark has a completely certain value. According to Forbes, the sale of the brand by a Liechtenstein company to a Dutch company at a market price was currently beneficial to IKEA: wholesale trade is managed from Switzerland, and the cash desk and management company are located in Belgium, in both countries taxation is very profitable.

2010:273 stores in 25 countries

273 stores in 25 countries (May 2010).

2008:231 stores in 24 countries, 127,000 employees

The company's chain of shopping centers numbered 231 stores in 24 countries (at the end of 2008), for the most part in Europe. As of the end of 2008, the total number of IKEA employees is 127.8 thousand people.

1943-1963

The company has Swedish roots and maintains the image of the Swedish company in all marketing communications. It was founded in 1943 in Sweden by Ingvar Kamprad.

Ingvar Kamprad started trading when he was 5 years old, buying matches wholesale in Stockholm and selling them in his small village at retail. The first buyer was his grandmother, who encouraged the young businessman. Ingwar continued to trade, delivered goods in person and sent them by mail, then they were pens, wallets, frames. In 1948, furniture first appeared in the assortment, and already in 1958 the first IKEA store in Sweden opened.

IKEA's first major 31,000 square metre store, Sweden, 1961

The chain of stores began to grow, in 1963 IKEA entered the international market, starting with Norway.

The name "IKEA" is an acronym, and stands for "Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd," that is, the name and surname of the founder and the name of the Elmtaryud farm in the parish of Agunnaryud, where he was born.

Notes