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The brilliant idea that will grow into the largest furniture empire in the world comes from a simple reason: the car is too small. It’s 1955. The future designer Gillis Lundgren is supposed to pick up a table for Ikea, a small trading company from the Swedish countryside, at a furniture factory. But the prototype absolutely doesn’t fit in the car: not on the back seat, not in the trunk. Then Lundgren has an idea. Without further ado, he removes the legs and packs them under the table top. Is handier.

And his boss? From this he designs a completely new business model: the furniture assembly kit.

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