Art directors, photographers, interior designers, copywriters, editors, image producers, product coordinators, seamstresses, carpenters, technicians and 3D artists – all add to this most popular free home furnishing publication in the world.

“The catalogue is made as global as possible, but as local as necessary,” says Johan Wickmark, Global Catalogue Manager. Meaning that if necessary the catalogue is adapted to each IKEA market.

The catalog is part of the IKEA concept. Every year a 350-page catalog will be printed, and features about a third of their range. Another part is the catalog’s broad distribution, which is unusual.

They have a goal of going out to a majority of households in our trading areas with the catalog in the hope that, while it may not impact a purchase today, it at some future point will.

So, we are very different in terms of the basic rules of marketing, which would suggest that before you invest in a big product like a catalog, make sure that you’re sending it to a customer who’s already been to the store. That’s not how we see it. The other thing is that the prices are guaranteed through the whole year and the idea is that, over time, the catalog becomes a reference book, kind of like the way the telephone book used to be.