When did you last sit down and read the IKEA catalog?
By: Enrique Dans
Tags: Print, Publication, Furniture, IKEA, Paper

Global furniture giant IKEA says that after seven decades of uninterrupted publication, it will no longer publish its iconic catalog, which was a very significant item in its marketing budget, due to a steady decline in interest from customers.

The first catalog was created by Ingvar Kamprad, in 1951, four years after he founded the company: it was 68 pages long, with a print run of 285,000 copies, in Swedish, and distributed in the south of the country. At the peak of its popularity in 2016, the company printed 200 million copies in 32 languages that were distributed in 50 countries. This year’s ran to 40 million copies. If you want to see the covers of all the catalogs from 1951 to 2018 and find the edition for the year you were born, here they are. Next year’s, the last, is available here. In the fall of 2021 the company will publish a commemorative edition with photos of previous editions, and will end a 70-year-old tradition.

Coming in at more than 300 pages detailing some 12,000 products, the catalog was distributed in stores and by mail. It took the company almost a year to produce each edition, a task carried out by the IKEA Communications AB division in Älmhult, Sweden, located at the site of the first IKEA store. This is the site of the largest photographic studio in northern Europe, spanning some 8,000 square meters; by 2012, it employed 285 people including photographers, carpenters, interior designers and others full-time on photo shoots. The catalog is printed on chlorine-free paper with a 10–15% post-consumer recycling rate. I wouldn’t try to calculate the tons of paper involved over the years, or how many trees were felled.

I have fond memories of the IKEA catalog: in 1996, when I arrived with my wife in the United States and had to furnish an apartment in about a week, my first “crime” on American soil was to steal an IKEA catalog from someone’s mailbox so as to find out where the nearest store was and what furniture I needed :-)

Why did IKEA decide to stop printing its catalog? Because this year has shown conclusively that the overwhelming majority of customers prefer using the company’s website. Over the years, the catalog has incorporated numerous innovations: the cover of the 2005 edition contained a single image of a computer-generated chair, a detail that went unnoticed. In 2010, a whole room was also computer-generated, a technology that by 2013 was already being used for 12% of images. From 2014 onwards, 75% of photos and 35% of other images were computer generated. In 2013, augmented reality was introduced, which allowed us to scan a code on a page of the catalog and access an application in which we could see the furniture superimposed with its real size on any room in our own house, along with assembly instructions and other interactive content.

The company’s online sales continue to grow rapidly, and the possibilities offered by digital technology to provide details about the brand’s products are limitless, and now involve applications and the use of social networks, as well as technologies such as virtual or augmented reality. Faced with a superior communication medium that is now easily accessible to the vast majority of the company’s potential customers, continuing with paper made no sense.

IKEA’s decision will likely be copied by companies of all types in all sectors: there must be so many still using paper for a range of uses that could be replaced by an electronic format. Think of the savings that could be made, the useful features provided for users, and most importantly, the environmental benefits, but that we aren’t taking advantage of because of our attachment to paper. It’s time to follow IKEA’s lead and embrace a paperless future.