IKEA
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This IKEA trivia quiz has 47 free questions with answers and walks the long natural way through the company: what the four letters stand for, the teenage founder who started by reselling matches, the first store in Älmhult, the leaf-shaped table whose sawn-off legs invented flat-pack, the Billy bookcase and the Poäng, the rules behind the strange product names, the restaurant and its meatballs, the catalogue that once out-printed the Bible, the blue Frakta bag Balenciaga copied, and the psychology paper that named the IKEA effect. There are questions on the store network, the largest store, the ownership structure and Kamprad's frugality and controversies too. It starts easy (what colour is the building?) and ends with questions only people who have read the founder's biography will get. It works as a round for a design-minded quiz night, an office icebreaker, or a solo test between trips for tea lights. Every answer has been checked against a reference source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01IKEA's self-service warehouse was born in 1971 when its Stockholm flagship reopened after which disaster?
A fire
A fire. A fault in one of the store's own illuminated signs started the 1970 blaze, and the rebuilt shop let customers into the warehouse to fetch their own flat-packs.
Q 02The E in IKEA stands for Elmtaryd, which was what to founder Ingvar Kamprad?
His family's farm
His family's farm. Kamprad grew up at Elmtaryd and ran the newly registered IKEA from it, sending out orders with the morning milk collection; the A is Agunnaryd, the nearby village.
Q 03IKEA's founder started the firm at 17 with a cash reward from his father for what?
Doing well at school
Doing well at school. Kamprad put the money into a mail-order firm selling pens and wallets, and furniture only joined the range five years later.
Q 04As a boy, what did Ingvar Kamprad first buy in bulk from Stockholm to resell to his neighbours?
Matches
Matches. He started at about five, selling them singly at a profit, and was soon cycling round the district with fish and seeds as well.
Q 05In which small Swedish town did the first IKEA store open in 1958?
Älmhult
Älmhult. When the store moved across town in 2012, the original building was restored to its 1958 look and reopened as the IKEA Museum.
Q 06IKEA's flat-pack idea is said to date from a designer taking the legs off what to fit it in a car?
A table
A table. Gillis Lundgren, IKEA's fourth employee, is credited with the brainwave in the 1950s, though the company's own history says it was already selling self-assembly tables in 1953.
Q 07IKEA's 1965 Stockholm flagship is often said to be modelled on which New York museum?
The Guggenheim Museum
The Guggenheim Museum. Architect Claes Knutson visited it before drawing the round store, though IKEA's own history says a circular Dutch builders' merchant that Kamprad admired may have played a part too.
Q 08Which was the first country outside its homeland to get an IKEA store, in 1963?
Norway
Norway. The shop opened at Nesbru outside Oslo, and IKEA then waited six years before trying a second foreign market.
Q 09IKEA opened its first US store in 1985 in Plymouth Meeting, a suburb of which Pennsylvania city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia. America proved hard to crack: IKEA was still struggling there in the 1990s and only won shoppers over after adapting its range to local tastes.
Q 10Which toy company teamed up with IKEA in 2020 on BYGGLEK, a range of storage boxes made for play?
Lego
Lego. The white boxes have studs on their lids so bricks can be built straight onto them, and the name is Swedish for "build and play".
Q 11IKEA's largest store in the world when it opened in 2021 is part of the Mall of Asia complex in which city?
Pasay, Philippines
Pasay, Philippines. It was also the country's first IKEA, and under Covid rules entry was by online booking only, with the slots full for days after it opened.
Q 12IKEA opened its first store in India in which city, famed for its biryani?
Hyderabad
Hyderabad. Out of respect for local beliefs, the 1,000-seat restaurant dropped IKEA's beef-and-pork meatballs and served chicken ones alongside samosas.
Q 13In March 2022 IKEA announced it was closing all 17 of its stores in which country?
Russia
Russia. IKEA shut the shops after the invasion of Ukraine and later put its Russian factories up for sale, while its 14 Mega shopping malls there stayed open.
Q 21In 2012, which animal went viral after wandering a Toronto IKEA car park in a shearling coat?
A monkey
A monkey. Darwin, a young pet, had let himself out of a crate in his owner's car, and a judge later ruled that he was a wild animal who should stay at a sanctuary.
Q 22IKEA's Poäng armchair echoes a 1939 bentwood design by which Finnish architect?
Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto. Poäng's designer borrowed the springy frame of Aalto's and Bruno Mathsson's classics, then cut the price by sourcing the wood, cushions and seat from different factories.
Q 23Which IKEA two-seat sofa has come back every year since about 1980 in new removable covers?
Klippan
Klippan. A product developer whose children had wrecked an expensive Italian sofa wanted one with soft corners and covers that could come off for the wash.
Q 14Which audio company made the speakers hidden inside IKEA's SYMFONISK lamps and bookshelves?
Sonos
Sonos. One of the lamp's designers said it partly sprang from the idea of a fireplace, a single piece giving out both warm light and sound.
Q 15What does IKEA call its creed of good design at low prices?
Democratic design
Democratic design. The slogan even reached the art world: in 2009 Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne made it the title of an exhibition devoted to IKEA furniture.
Q 16IKEA's rugs and carpets are named after places in which country?
Denmark
Denmark. IKEA's borrowed place names travel so far that in 2021 Sweden's tourist board ran a campaign, "Discover the Originals", to win some of its own back.
Q 17Which part of IKEA's range is named after lakes and rivers, such as Lake Bolmen?
Bathroom products
Bathroom products. Bolmen is a real Swedish lake, popular for swimming and kayaking, though in 2021 Sweden's tourist board ran a campaign insisting it is more than an IKEA toilet brush.
Q 18Why did Ingvar Kamprad prefer real words to product codes for naming furniture?
He was dyslexic
He was dyslexic. Names stuck in his memory where strings of digits did not, so IKEA built a system in which every family of products draws on its own list of words.
Q 19The Billy bookcase is said to be named after whom?
An IKEA advertising manager
An IKEA advertising manager. Billy Liljedahl had kept complaining that the range lacked a proper bookcase just for books, though IKEA's own history says only that it was "perhaps" named after him.
Q 20By IKEA's 2020 estimate, roughly how often was a Billy bookcase sold somewhere in the world?
Every five seconds
Every five seconds. Billy is so widespread that Bloomberg built a Billy Bookcase Index on it, comparing its price from country to country to gauge purchasing power.
Q 24What does IKEA call the supervised children's play area in its stores?
Småland
Småland. The name is a pun: små is Swedish for small, and Småland is also the forested province where founder Ingvar Kamprad grew up and IKEA began.
Q 25By IKEA's own account, which play-area attraction did two of its designers build into its rebuilt Stockholm store in 1971?
A ball pit
A ball pit. IKEA's history says the designers got the idea from small plastic balls used as packing material and swapped in bigger ones that a child could not choke on.
Q 26IKEA's plant-based meatballs are made from pea protein, oats, potatoes and which fruit?
Apples
Apples. IKEA sells more than a billion meatballs a year, so it made the plant-based version look and taste like meat in the hope that meat lovers would switch and shrink its climate footprint.
Q 27Which fashion designer created IKEA's 2019 MARKERAD collection, including a rug printed "KEEP OFF"?
Virgil Abloh
Virgil Abloh. The founder of the streetwear label Off-White also remade IKEA's blue shopping bag with the word "SCULPTURE" on it, arguing that everyday objects can become art.
Q 28Designer Gillis Lundgren is said to have first sketched IKEA's Billy bookcase on the back of what?
A napkin
A napkin. The story has Lundgren fearing he would forget the idea, though IKEA's own history says it came from an engineer who had toured the factories making its shelves.
Q 29At its peak, IKEA's printed catalogue was said to have a bigger circulation than which book?
The Bible
The Bible. The catalogue ran to about 200 million copies a year at its height, but IKEA scrapped it after the 2021 edition because shoppers had moved online.
Q 30IKEA upset typography fans in 2009 by switching its catalogue from Futura to which screen-friendly font?
Verdana
Verdana. IKEA wanted one typeface for print and web, but designers were so appalled at seeing a screen font in print that the row was dubbed "Verdanagate".