Ikea - love to hate them

So as everyone knows a trip to ikea holds a lot in store...cheap furnishings, expensive furniture that eventually will break either because you made it wrong/a skrew is lose/there isn't real wood involved. You also get the amazing lunch for $3 (2 hotdogs, back of chips and a soda + frozen yougert). There are a million and 1 options there and all for a good price, yet when you get home what you bought never seems to really replicate what the display room they showed you. And with that said, lets gain some insight...

• Ikea began in 1943 in the small village of Agunnaryd in Sweden.
• The founder, Ingvar Kamprad, was only 17
• In the end of 2010 there were 313 IKEA chain stores in 38 countries
• Countries with the top five sales were: Germany 16%, USA 11%, France 10%, UK 7%, and Italy 7%.
• Ikea has 12,000 home furnishing articles
• Ingvar Kamprad who invented the name IKEA by taking the first initial of his first and last name (IK) and adding the first initial of the farm and village where he was raised (Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd). Together the name IKEA was born.

Most interesting the IKEA NAMING SYSTEM - How do they come up with those funny names?

IKEA products are identified by single word names. Most of the names are Swedish in origin. Although there are some notable exceptions, most product names are based on a special naming system developed by IKEA.^[

• Upholstered furniture, coffee tables, rattan furniture, bookshelves, media storage, doorknobs: Swedish placenames (for example: Klippan)
• Beds, wardrobes, hall furniture: Norwegian place names
• Dining tables and chairs: Finnish place names
• Bookcase ranges: Occupations
• Bathroom articles: Scandinavian lakes, rivers and bays
• Kitchens: grammatical terms, sometimes also other names
• Chairs, desks: men's names
• Materials, curtains: women's names
• Garden furniture: Swedish islands
• Carpets: Danish place names
• Lighting: terms from music, chemistry, meteorology, measures, weights, seasons, months, days, boats, nautical terms
• Bedlinen, bed covers, pillows/cushions: flowers, plants, precious stones
• Children's items: mammals, birds, adjectives
• Curtain accessories: mathematical and geometrical terms
• Kitchen utensils: foreign words, spices, herbs, fish, mushrooms, fruits or berries, functional descriptions
• Boxes, wall decoration, pictures and frames, clocks: colloquial expressions, also Swedish place names