In order to realize their ambitious growth goals in the US, IKEA needed to make some changes. Our analysis uncovered that their problem was two-fold. First, if IKEA was only known for its quirky Swedish furniture, it would never have mass appeal. Second, they couldn’t simply rely on typical furniture-buying events like births, marriages, and divorces which normally cause people to reconsider their home furnishing needs.
We had a two-fold solution. First, we discovered their inventory had lots of mainstream furniture they hadn’t been showing, and chose to feature that in all our communications. Secondly, we discovered a powerful motivator for buying home furnishings that had never been exploited: having people over. Within eight weeks, sales at the four Los Angeles-area IKEAs were up 15% versus the prior year, in a furniture market that showed only 3% growth. On the strength of these results, IKEA awarded us their entire US account.