YouSaid · the spoken record

Jesper Brodin

lines on the record: 52
first: 2025-06-04
most recent: 2025-06-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And to be outspoken of your principles, what you represent and what you stand for. And at the same time, I think when you think about the future, look for something, continue to look for the things that you're good at and the things that you love to do. And if you can find the combination of those two things, you probably will find happiness. And if you don't, there is always another opportunity to try something new around the corner.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for young people today, and I do have the pleasure to meet a lot of young people and young leaders, I set up actually a group of young activists that is advising me in my management group. And I do have full access to the company, by the way. And we have a very nice agreement that they actually write the page in our annual report every year that I don't proofread before they write it. I think... The generation today has more information and is also lured by misinformation more than probably any generation before.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for Ikea, for the next 10 years, I think the dream is to continue to be able to grow and meet and reach more people, both offering jobs and meeting more customers around the world. And I think the biggest dream in all of that is to be a proof point that it is actually possible to be a good business by doing good business. So the integration of people, respectful people principles when it comes to diversity, inclusion, respect for people, but also setting up IKEA as a truly climate smart value chain and driving financial excellence through that is the big vision.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do I thought you would ask, are you a good? Well, in our family, I am the chief dishwasher. But I have a couple of my pasta bolognese is good.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a good kitchen from a home furnishing perspective is actually quality. So by integrating quality in every part of your design and still being able to scale that proves that you actually, it's proving the IKEA democratic design formula that you can make an affordable kitchen at the best quality. But then I think kitchen for people is about the heart of the home. It's about providing solutions where people, you know, relax, do the homework, work from home, enjoy friends, family celebrations. So the kitchen, as I see it, is really the heart of the home for people.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The kitchen department for six years. So kitchens is, I would say it's the most complex product in Ikea because it's part of a system. So you need to know many products in order to make a kitchen. And I found that absolutely fascinating.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was part of developing that in Asia as a young leader. And except for knowing how well it works today and what that has meant environmentally but also socially for a lot of people, I found incredible joy to know that it's helped IKEA to strengthen its finances. So to be a good business is actually also helpful when doing good business.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like a couple of things, sometimes it can be details, great products have been part of developing and so on. But if I take any area, I think it is starting in 1995 in IKEA, in Pakistan. Karachi Pakistan was my first assignment. These were the days when IKEA was looking at sourcing opportunities outside Europe. So I was put there to build up sourcing of textiles. I did. It was an incredible success in many ways from my business growth. But it was also the first time at Ikea when we started to confront ourselves to say, do we need to bring our values to our supply chain as well? Or is it enough if we apply them on our own offices or communities? And in the end of the day, we, so to say, came to the conclusion that we have to be a leader when it comes to environmental aspects and social aspects. And that goes for everything we do in our values.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, so that in the roles that we have also leading us, CEOs are big organization and companies, you can get trapped in your own rabbit hole of your own importance, but also you can get stuck in your problems and also even in the worst case the myth that if you gear up a little bit extra and work longer hours would be the sleepless, et cetera, that that would be the pathway to success. And obviously it's the opposite. You need to find ways to broaden your perspective and recharge.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think all of us need to have our channel of recharging. And for me music is definitely one of them. And writing music, writing lyrics, writing music gives me, so to say, another dimension to life. And it opens up to many other dimensions as well. And of course as a hobby, to have the opportunity to meet the band, to record in a studio, to focus on something totally different gives me a lot of recharging of batteries for what I do at work.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It probably below the age of 20, I would guess that 80% of them have less interest in music. That's just my opinion. But in any case, for me, to be serious, I think music is a way of relaxing. So after a tough day at work or a tough week, if I get one hour with my electric guitar and to play a little bit, that's super relaxing. It's like totally disconnecting. It's a bit of meditation for me because you can't do that and have other thoughts in your head. So it's a way to clean your mind a little bit. And it's also incredibly fun to play with others.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've always been interested in music since I was, I think, 12, 13 years. To be honest, the first interest in music was, I noticed that if I learned to play the guitar and sing, I was more lucky when it comes to the competition of girlfriends and parties and other things. So I had a thought about it. But my musical interest developed into new areas along the way.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you could actually play said generation. It's a tribute to the youth out there who's actually working as activist in the interest of our Next Generation.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, how do I encourage people? Well, I have one of my favorite techniques is I have a banana card. And the banana card was actually invented in a dialogue with a big group of IKEA colleagues who said Openly that I will feel sometimes afraid of daring to make mistakes, what would be the consequences. So I invented this card where I basically cosign in advance for your mistake. And I've handed that out to a lot of people. And I actually do follow up with everyone who I handed this card to. But more as an encouragement to say, if you do a mistake and you look for somebody to share that burden with, you can count on me. And obviously symbolically to say don't wait with acting on your ideas. If you have an idea and you don't act on it, it's not only that we miss the opportunity of learning, but I think people who don't act on ideas slowly and gradually, there's something dying inside, you know, if you give up on acting on your ideas. And for us, it's important to be a live community of people who go for their ideas and continue to look for the next horizon.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The big Where should we begin? I think if you look at the last part, if we say the definition of mistake is that you have acted on a problem but didn't find the right solution, if you say like that. And I think the last years we have been more entrepreneurial than in a very long time, in particular when it comes to transformation of retail. So we have invested both digitally and physically as we spoke about city stores and other things that simply didn't work in the beginning. But by having that spirit and not just working linearly, but actually iterate a lot of different tests and trials, you will be faster in finding the pathway to the future.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Speed is important, I think. Agility and speed is important because the world is changing in a faster and faster way. We have seen that in technology. We see that in politics and so forth. And being a big company, I think it's one of the biggest risks for us is that we are too slow and too bureaucratic. And obviously being part of a big system, there is always a force of nature that invites you to make things more complicated, maybe hire a little bit too many experts, too many meetings and so on. So you need to constantly try to cut down on meetings, encourage people to take decisions, to take risks, to dare to do mistakes. Ikea was never there, right? It was developed year by year by people who had the courage to take those risks. So I think the biggest threat today for us, besides things like climate change, economic turmoil, would be Arington.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think happy marriage is number one. And stability in your life in general, I think, is required because today to be a leader, it requires you to be agile. Again, we have seen crisis after crisis. So you need to develop a way of resilience in your life, a way of recharge, a way of, I think, accepting that in many ways you need to accept dilemmas and accept that you don't have the answers, but that you can be open, transparent, authentic in your leadership will allow you to actually collaborate with people and hopefully do a better job than if you know it also to say.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think from a leadership perspective, I think I'm a fairly good representative of the IKEA value, so at least some of them. So I think people would describe me as a person with a lot of willpower, but also humbleness. I'm an employee, like everybody else in IKEA. And I think for me, it's important to stay grounded in reality. I worked with INVAR. I had the opportunity not only to learn from him, but also realized that we shared a lot of the same viewpoints of staying grounded with people out there in our factories, in our homes, in our stores. I get joy from that. And I believe there by also sometimes I and we in Ikea find actually the pathway to speed in the future because we are close to reality.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't print the catalog, actually, since a couple of years back. There are a few markets I know that keep it as an extra, you can say, marketing injection. But as we knew the catalog as the foundation for unfurnishing, it started to lose its role when online came. At the last year, it was also just observing to say that it was a waste of resources. It was a waste of paper in the end. And we find other ways, better ways to engage with our customers.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Great retraction of volumes and everything if it wouldn't have been for the opportunity to actually operate through online. So it gave us a good lesson, I think, to keep your eyes and ears open for the changes in the world. So we see AI is coming big and for us that's going to revolutionize and it's already in our value chain revolutionizing goods flow, helping simplify and saving costs through goods flow. It's helping us in customer service at scale. It's helping us when it comes to home planning, how you actually serve your customers in making sense of home planning in the future. And probably it's going to help us in many more ways that we don't know today.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To start with, you can say Ikia was late in the digital revolution, if you like. So basically, platform companies like Amazon and Moore revolutionized retailing for good, I would say. And that revolution started in the early 2000s. Ikea continued to be very successful with our store formats and with our business. So it was first somewhere around 2012, 14, 15. We started to see change behaviors with our customers. So we were late on that. And as I referred to before, we decided to make the online and the omni channel transformation. Interesting enough, Nikolai, as we took that decision, we had no clue about the pandemic that came a few years later. Now, thanks to us shifting to online, it actually saved the company during the pandemic. We would have been in massive red numbers, in layoffs, and in”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But is that so? I think we have had different successes, right? I think Norway has been incredibly successful in energy when it comes to companies like Yara working with fertilization and so on. So there are different things in Norway that is, of course, a phenomenal. Sweden has been good in technology and with IKEA as one of the leaders, but many more like H&M. I think maybe one of the reasons that Scandinavians in general are successful is that we know that we're small. So in order to be successful, we have to be out there. We have to adapt. We have to understand different cultures and look for opportunities and win-win. And I do believe as of today in this world, I think...”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you look at the speed of governments right now and not for a good reason, it's difficult for us as companies to keep up. So what we do, we continue to invest long-term in our markets and basically we have to mitigate some of the issues around trade restrictions and so on along the way.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or you can say for decades we were used, I think, in our generation year by year easier to do multilateral deals, less issues with borders. So we were, so to say, I think taken for granted that the pathway of collaboration around trade would continue. And then we find ourselves in some 10 years back in a much more challenging situation. I think it's understandable. The world is changing. As I met somebody in Davos in January who said that we have left one world order and we haven't yet established a new one. And times in between tend to be a little bit chaotic. And that's what we're seeing today. So obviously you can say it puts pressure on companies in general and big companies like IKEA find ourselves in the interesting dilemma that way back companies used to be quick and gap.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's a couple of weeks in. We are running in the second week. It's one of the biggest successes from an opening point of view we had so far. So already the first week, it was the second biggest store when it comes to visitations in Ikea. And if you compare that then to the big stores out there, that has to be seen as a success. But we need to give it a year to see also that we manage as well when it comes not only to attract people, but also financially.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“from time to time. But again, if we don't have an idea around the corner 10 minutes away, we might choose somebody else. So we began a journey of transforming into online services, the whole logistical backbone of IKEA was re-engineered. And as part of that, you can say the cream on top was that we started to experiment with a smaller versions of Ikea in cities. Interesting enough, I think we made so many mistakes and so many miscalculations on what we thought customers in the city would like to have. But seven years down the road, we've actually found a format which is much like a big store. It's just a bit smaller, but you can actually buy everything from Ikea. You can have your meatballs. And obviously you won't be able to pick up your sofa from Oxford Street, but you will be able to shop everything in a lot of products you can take with you on the same day, actually.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's one of the biggest investments we've done, to be honest. So hopefully it will work. It's an interesting thing because a few years ago when we started to deep interview customers around the world, this is actually before IKEA transformed into OmniChannel and online at all. Back then, some 80 years ago, we were more or less store-based. So when we spoke to customers, they told us that if you don't show up on an ordinary workday when I put my kids to bed and I need something. If you don't show up online in my phone or on my laptop, I'm going to start to deselect you. So that was very important message for us to hear from my customers. The same customers often said, in particular the ones living in the biggest cities or the metropolitan areas of the world say we will go to Ikea in Tokyo, in London, in New York.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second hand part, I would say it's still a bit of a test and trial from our side. It's very much appreciated by customers. If I look at the total carbon footprint of Ikea, it's not the thing that has contributed the biggest carbon reduction. But we're on our way. So what we do is we offer take-back service to our stores. We do sell secondhand furniture through all our stores globally. And recently we have started to engage in Norway in Spain and we are intending to roll it out globally. We have actually created our own secondhand digital platform where then customers can actually get an easier way to sell their IKEA products from customer to customer.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“get independence you actually of course get a lower NE bill our energy bill in IK is 29% lower than before Paris agreement and then you continue step by step in the value chain and even if it's not always that easy it requires investments and it requires that you take a big step putting your whole scale behind it otherwise you don't get the financial benefits”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then she explained to me, I don't have the money. So I have two jobs. I have two kids. My mother comes and helps me when they're back from school, etc. Do you really expect me to pay? And she was very clear to say, I expect you, yes. And leaders like you and me, Nikolai, to take our responsibility. I think she was morally right, but I didn't know then that she was actually financially right. There is no need to pay extra for sustainability. On the contrary, everything we have done in IKEA to become climate smart has actually made us save money. And when you think about it, it's obvious because, of course, if you use less material or material in a smarter way or have the opportunity of circular material, would that make you more expensive or would it make you low? Of course it's lower price. If you implement renewable energy instead of expensive oil and gas, you don't own...”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. I think one of the common misunderstandings with that, which I would subscribe to a while ago myself, there was a lady Emmet in making a home visit in Belgrade a couple of years ago. She was a single mother, two kids, two jobs. We had a discussion because she was passionate about the environment. She was very...”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into the climate work, what we have found except that it's good from an ethical perspective because we like to contribute from a moral standpoint. It is something that has strengthened Ikea's brand massively. We have data points that shows across all of the world how important this is for people. And here comes the most interesting part of the more maybe, Nikolai. A lot of people think that the climate transformation would come at a extra high cost or at, so to say, as a burden. What we have found out is from raw material production, transport, retailing, all the way to customers, that is actually helped us reduce our cost and become a much smarter financially set company for the future.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think to start with, I think it's an interesting divide in the world. And I see more and more companies actually being on the train ride to become climate smart. Many of them might not shout it out loudly. Many think that they are still in the early days of it. But interesting enough, I've seen also in the banking world, in services, in particular in US, but also in parts of other parts of the world where people have backtracked, which I found interesting. Now, in our case, we took the decision to be a leader when it comes to climate smartness, actually even before the Paris Agreement was signed. We have been a pioneer in figuring out both how do you understand your impact, how do you measure that in terms of what is called Scope 3, which means basically end-to-end for the company. And interesting enough at this moment,”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I've seen in IK is that we have been able to do quite well, maintain speed in the company, a lot thanks to the values where people know that they are actually mandated to take decisions and empower themselves and that we try to lead in a humble style together. I believe Ringva would have been proud if I have seen how actually we are leading the company today”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think he did a good job with the values. The values in IKEA is not something that comes as a communication slogan afterwards, but it's actually integrate from the recruitment to how we like to work. And it is interesting because the question came when he passed away how we would continue to maintain and develop the IKI culture. And I've seen through the last years, you know, that has been probably the most difficult period for anyone of us in business, like for yourself. We have had pandemic, war, economic turmoil, trade war, climate crisis. So these have not been easy times.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are several people who have similar philosophies as he had. He was also of that generation who basically understood how to scale business and create value through scale. And Inva was a master in that.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vision, he was not so good at strategy, I would say. He skipped that part and he went straight for actions on the store floor, on the factory floor and so on. And he just, that was the two places he loved to be. He basically detested the boardrooms or the committees. And for him, life was about the factory, developing products with people or the store, making sure that we make a better job for our customers.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a very special person. When I started as his assistant, I didn't really know him that well. And what I found many things I found interesting, and one of the things what is very authentic person. So as he told me his life story, you know, he made a success in his late 30s. The company was growing. He made a lot of money. And only to realize that for him the personal success or the value of money had actually quite little interest for him. So he returned to his childhood style and his childhood principles, which was a person who lived quite a thrifty life. He was very cost-conscious. I tried to convince him to change his old volvo, but he kept it for the rest of his life. Today it's donated actually to the Volvo Museum in Gothenburg. And as far as I know, it still runs. He was a true entrepreneur. He was a person with great...”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I had the opportunity to work as assistant to him starting in late 1999 for three years, actually. And then, of course, ever since we became good friends, and I had the pleasure to work with him, yeah.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't be able to answer that if I look back earlier generations. But if you look at my own period at IKEA and also being the leader of IKEA of Sweden, who is the design company, I think we pride ourselves to develop our own designs. Of course, we will be inspired of the different trends of the time, but we are very careful to not copy anybody else or infringe on anybody's rights. And I can't remember even if you look at the last decades any argument around that.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's been argued, who was the inventor of the flatpack, but definitely this goes way back to the early days of Ikea. And Ingbar himself and Gilis Lundgren, one of the first designers, if not the first actually designing Ikea, they basically had a co-creation on a table, a side table to a sofa where they realized that if they could find a way to take off the legs, you would save approximately 80% of the air and thereby drive down the prices. So this product, Colette, is claimed to be one of the first, if not the first flatback product. And still today, it is incredibly interesting because if you look at what that does from a cost perspective and a climate footprint point of view, it's just an incredible invention.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now I start to sound like a salesperson. I realize. But you learned me in there. No, I don't only have IKEA products. I have a lot of IKEA products in my home for sure, but not only.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So in our range, we have approximately, you can say, 20% of our range would be top families, as we call them, or key products in IKEA. You're right, Billy is definitely one of the long-lasting products in IKEA. You have clipban, you have weighing arm share, and you have quite a number of storage units as well. We have our kitchen unit, our packs wardrops, and so on. Nevertheless, these products are also updated. There are cali changes. improvements to it. Pax wardrobe in Ikea, which is one of the oldest products, has recently been remade. So instead of being too...”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we actually changed about 20% of our products annually. Now, I would say approximately half of that would be calor updates of textiles, or it might even be products that we do, we learn things and we do improvements technically quality-wise and so forth. But at least 10% would be entirely new products.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decided to take Scandinavian look on things. So we do have traditional things. We do have more modern things. But we have our particular Scandinavian point of view on how we think things should look like, typically quite simplistic. Fourth dimension, sustainability, which says a lot about how the product was made in relation to people and planet. And then you have all of these at a low price. So one of the things that is required is definitely scale in order to, so to say, achieve all these identities in a product. But it requires a lot of knowledge from an engineering point of view to actually build things in a smarter way. So again, I think a lot of competitors do a good job, but IKEA is dedicated for every product to try to actually design it in a way to prove that you don't have to be rich to be smart.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are a lot of good companies out there who try it. But it's an interesting question because it is definitely a very tricky task what we're trying to achieve. So we have this formula of design, which we call democratic design. So that represents five things. It represents function. At Ikea, we, so to say, committed to do things functionally. Folding shares, storage units, things that truly work for people in life at home, not at least in small spaces. That's a great commitment to quality where we work through understanding true families' needs. We only sell sofas with washable covers, for instance, and so forth. So quality is the second dimension. The third dimension, or there is no real numbers to them, but a third dimension is about form, where we then have”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. It's a lot of meeplos. We are actually one of the big food companies of the world. It's interesting because I recall back in, it must have been back in 2013 or 2014, we took a look at ourselves when it comes to food, which is a complementary part of our offer and not the primary one. And we realized with the help of some big organizations that we actually have quite a food footprint, both when it comes to sales customers, but also when it comes to health aspects and sustainability aspects. So I know for a fact this was the starting point for us to actually start the journey towards also offering plant-based, more healthy alternatives and so forth. But we are probably the biggest seller of meatballs in the world, I would say.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're using amazing words here, shockingly. We sometimes say tapa undan, producta, which means breathtaking items. So we try to promote a low price at the beginning. But for Akea, it's an interesting thing because our job is not really to be sheep. We serve people with thin wallets out there. What we always try to say is a story about not only the low price, but how we made it, what others built in sustainability around it, the functions, the quality items and so on. So it's hopefully not just a good offer, but actually a story around it.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the entrance, we try to say, send a couple of messages. One message is around food, because typically our customers have traveled from somewhere. And we know for sure that you don't make good business deals on an empty stomach. So we want to promote the opportunity to actually spend some time in a restaurant. You have the opportunity to, if you bring your kids to actually drop them off in the small land area, which is like the haven for kids to play and have fun while the parents are looking for things for the home, you would definitely see some inspiration around life at home and home furnishing. You would see a strong message around low price that we will send. And today, these days, you would always see messages around how we try to show up as a company in terms of being people and planet positive and so around sustainability. So these are some of the messages.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The blue ones. Well, the blue bags have, we use the yellow bags when you are inside the store and then you replace it with blue when you leave. The blue bags have become iconic. And I think in hundreds of millions of households, they serve for moving things as laundry bags and whatnot. I even know that some of the professional tennis players of the world use them when they go to their center courts for games and so forth. So it's an iconic IKEA product for sure.”
2025-06-04 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · Jesper Brodin: Inside IKEA, Democratic Design, and Sustainability Profits · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source