How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

bcaulfield

Amazing. A post asks a question in the title that I actually want answered, and then goes on to answer that question clearly and succinctly. Maybe the best corporate content I've seen this year.

close04

> Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had a hard time remembering numbers and numbers And also numbers I assume. Does it mean something like “endless stream of numbers”? I’m very surprised that they have 2000-3000 new products every year. Checking every name against every language of countries they operate in to avoid “bad” names must be a pain.

Xirdus

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö I always thought it's just a natural consequence of using Swedish language, turns out it's on purpose!

dvaplima

Nice, How to use that strategy for software? But first It makes sense?

joshdavham

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?

fy20

For a Swede it must seem kind of strange to understand the product names. You see an ACORN toy, a NIGEL bookshelf, and the CROYDON sofa... which sounds like it belongs in a council estate flat. Definately more fun would be the Polish version. How many people can pronounce the BYDGOSZCZ sofa, the PRZEMYSŁAW bookcase and the PSZCZOŁA soft toy?

tverbeure

> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile. I love the JERKER desk that I bought 26 years ago, so I assume this rule must be younger than that.

whalesalad

I figured they just let a Dala horse walk around on top of a bunch of keyboards and whatever string comes out is the new name?

Eduard

> contain between 4 and 12 letters PAX https://www.ikea.com/de/en/cat/pax-system-19086/

7734128

The door mats are mostly named after places in Denmark, as they should be.

junaru

> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile. Hey Donna [1]... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2oje4cYxw

hk__2

> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year? I find this surprisingly high; I guess it’s _products_ and not _names_, meaning that five colors of the same product count as five new products but only one name.

jansan

I love how the chose Verde, which means value, for their long time retired kitchen furniture. They were so good that they still sell above their original retail prices now.

senko

My favorite is `fejka` for the artificial plant/flower. I think "being as widely-understandable pun as possible" is definitely one of their naming priorities.

jannyfer

The $50USD Bluetooth speakers "NATTBAD" gave us a good chuckle. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/nattbad-bluetooth-speaker-yello...

dofm

I had assumed it involved a dartboard.

plaidfuji

This is so random. I had just pulled this exact page up this morning to settle a debate with coworkers over whether the product names were real Swedish words or not. I thought they were all made up! Was very surprised to find things like “bookshelves are all men’s names”, “all names must have ä, å, or ö”, etc. Complete coincidence that this is #2 today. Had to check that ’NaOH’ wasn’t one of my coworkers

culebron21

https://zagge.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/13333008.jpg Translation: Somewhere inside IKEA. - How do we call the table lamp? - GNVOERK

mig39

The Fräck mirror was named after the commonly used faux swear word on Battlestar Galactica, where one of the characters used a similar mirror: https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/p/fraeck-mirror-stainless-steel-3...