I have juste finished reading the excellent book of Anders Dahlvig about Ikea's success story. Anders Dahlvig has been the CEO of Ikea for 10 years, between 1999 and 2009, but more than that has spent about his whole career at Ikea, working in different business units of the group. Hence, rather than telling the story of how Ikea has grown, Anders Dahlvig analyzes what makes Ikea a remarkable success story.
This book has really inspired me as a retail professionnal. Indeed, Ikea has great ideas on how to run a retail business, and some of them are quite different from how retailers usually think. This book has so many great ideas, that I decided to make a series of posts instead of one, in order to analyze the favorite parts I have from the books.
Why you should read this book:
- The Story of Ikea: Even though it is not the sole purpose of the book, you learn a lot of details on the key dates, but also how and why Ikea grew the way it did.
- The retail strategy: there are great ideas that retail businessmen should read carefully, in order to understand very specific parts of Ikea's success. I will write couple of notes about them.
- The management style: Beyond retail parts, Ikea has a management styles that have thrived throughout the years. It could be very inspiring.
- Understanding how to settle in new markets: Dahlvig tells us about how happened the launch of new business units in new markets. It is important to know for companies that wants to go abroad.
