Published 11 March 2020 • Inter IKEA newsroom
IKEA to double its in-house design department
IKEA has taken a strategic decision to grow its in-house design team by almost twice its size over the next two years. The decision is a step toward meeting the IKEA growth plans, as well as developing and strengthening the brand's design identity.
“At IKEA, we want to offer desirable and affordable design to customers around the world. But people´s demands and expectations change with time, and we need to develop too, to stay relevant in our offer continuously. For many years, as we grew our business and entered new markets, we kept our in-house design team roughly the same size. We see now, with our current expansion plans and movements to deliver to our vision of creating a better everyday life for the many people, it´s time to invest and add more in-house design competence to meet these needs and ambitions”, says Emma Dafnäs, Range and Product Design Manager at IKEA of Sweden.
Today, IKEA has 18 in-house designers working with product development across the entire range. As an in-house designer, you are often part of several design projects at the time and, together with our product development teams and freelance designers, you contribute to approximately 2000 new products that are developed each year. In the heart of the IKEA product development is the Democratic Design model, meaning that all products are beautiful, functional and affordable with built-in quality and sustainability.
The ambition is to grow the in-house design department by roughly twice its size in a stepwise approach over two years. First recruitments will start this spring. IKEA of Sweden in Älmhult, Sweden, is and will continue to be the heart of product development and design within IKEA but there also some designers stationed at the IKEA Product Development Centres in Delhi, India, and Shanghai, China.
“Design has been at the core of IKEA product development from the early years, and we are proud of our Swedish heritage, where function and beauty work in harmony in every product. Our designers are here to ensure and develop strong IKEA design identity in our product range as we continue to meet the needs and dreams of the many people in life at home. Staying close to our suppliers and understanding the production capabilities, we will continue using design to find new innovative and sustainable product solutions at affordable prices to meet the high ambitions IKEA have set”, says Eva Lilja Löwenhielm, Design Manager at IKEA of Sweden.
In addition to this investment, IKEA will continue the successful and important work with an extensive network of freelance designers as well as design collaborations.