The idea of introducing a table at a price under the ten dollar barrier was extremely disruptive and innovative. This aims to ensure that the price of this table will be so low that no competitor could even approach it. WIth a launch price of only US$9.99, Lack tables was indeed a huge sale success and soon became a symbol of IKEA’s low-price philosophy.
PRODUCT INNOVATION #1:
Using “board-on-frame” technology which are used for producing inner doors for its Lack Series Furniture
Source:
Hakan Hakansoon & Alexandra Waluszewsk. (2009). Knowledge and
Innovation in Business and Industry: The importance of using others
For products like tables, materials and transport are major cost factors. Hence, a solution that would allow saving materials and reducing the product’s weight was explicitly on the agenda. As often happens to IKEA such a technology was found among one of their suppliers. However, this solution was far from a ready-made one for table production - it was developed and used in the house-building material industry. It was when a product developer from IKEA visited a door manufacturer that he almost stumbled on a technical solution that perhaps would allow for the production of a resistant, but lightweight and inexpensive sofa table.
For several decades the production of inner doors relied on a technology known as “board-on-frame”. A wooden frame was filled with honeycombed paper and covered by a resistant thin sheet of wood. With the board-on-frame technology, IKEA saw the possibility of producing a visually attractive, but low-weight and material-saving table.this technology also had its shortcomings: it was applied to inner doors, which do not need to be as resistant as furniture pieces. The Lack table demanded a strength that allowed a person to stand on it without damaging the table.
Source:
Hakan Hakansoon & Alexandra Waluszewsk. (2009). Knowledge and
Innovation in Business and Industry: The importance of using others
Transfer of
knowledge
Nonetheless, IKEA decided to test board-on-frame. The door supplier, in cooperation with its own suppliers and IKEA, began refining the technology to overcome the resistance problem. Among other things, a special type of honey-combed paper was introduced, alongside an exclusive use of the high resistant HDF (high density fibreboard) to cover tabletops. However, attaining a resistant structure turned out to be possible only with very thick surfaces, exactly like those of inner doors.
For this reason the Lack table got its peculiar design: its tabletop had a very unusual thickness for sofa tables of five centimetres. And most importantly, the modified board-on-frame allowed IKEA to launch Lack in 1981 for a retail price of only US$9.99. Exposed in the IKEA catalogue and in all retail stores, this small table (55 X 55cm) with its thick tabletop became a very visible item among other traditional tables and soon turned out to be an incredible sales success. Almost a quarter after a century after its birth, Lack is still a best seller, selling 2.5 million pieces per year worldwide, one of IKEA’s largest sales successes ever. But most important is that 25 years after its launch, Lack is still available at the very retail price of US$9.99. Achieving this bold target - at least so it seemed in 1981 - was however not easy; it required IKEA and its suppliers to engage in almost 100 extensive technical development projects, some of them involving up to ten cooperative partners, including both small firms and large multinationals.
Source:
Hakan Hakansoon & Alexandra Waluszewsk. (2009). Knowledge and
Innovation in Business and Industry: The importance of using others
Strength:
1. Transfer of knowledge, using a known technology or
methodology to create an innovative product.
Similarly, in the Handpresso case, bicycle pump is used to
provide pressure in the chamber.
2. Reduce time to market since the need to create a new
technology is not required
3. Learning how to work with other players in its ecosystem.
Weakness:
1. Suppliers will learn about the processes behind Lack table
and might copy IKEA's idea of producing Lack table
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