We meet Managing Director Fredrika Inger and Global Design Manager Johan Ejdemo in Älmhult, the birthplace of IKEA, to hear how to scale circular solutions and material innovations for the many.
In her role as Managing Director at IKEA of Sweden, Inger (pictured) is responsible for developing and managing the product portfolio — the global one, but also for every market, such as Italy, Sweden, the US, or India. Global Design Manager Ejdemo is leading the in-house design team and the company’s design community.
What is the most important trend for you and the industry in 2025?
— System change, circularity, and sustainability, says Ejdemo.
How’d you describe the circularity journey that you’re going through right now?
— It’s a big, big topic, representing a full value chain, from sourcing raw materials to meeting the customers, and the homes they’re in, says Inger. We have set up ambitions to reach a 50% reduction of our climate footprint as well as becoming fully circular, with the products at the centre to clear the different loops of circularity.
— For every designer working on any project today, you have to look at it with new eyes. We do so many different things, and there are different value chains connected to all of them. For raw materials, what are the raw materials? And, the different complexities to that: source renewable, recyclable, or recycled materials, small items, big items. In packaging, flat packs, easy assemblies, disassembly, reassembly, and repairability, says Ejdemo. He continues:
— We’re used to it from a design perspective because we’ve always done products that are in flat packs, and we need to think a few extra loops for understanding how to break them down. You can use all kinds of good materials with good intentions in the product. But if you put them together in the wrong way, you don’t get that value out of it when you can’t separate them, and that creates a problem. It’s down to very nerdy things like the melting temperature of a thread or the material in a label that sits on something in another material. You mess it up if you don’t understand these details. We learn every day, we try to do the best that we know, and we have a lot of people around us who know in depth different areas. Then, later on, we sometimes learn that there is probably another, better way to do it. This is just showing that a lot is happening connected to design — and that’s a positive thing.
— This is the one top of mind that every designer has today. And the other thing is the CO2 agenda, being resourceful when making products, deselect what doesn’t really matter and keep what really matters in the design. I often say that it’s also a recipe for good design to do that. However, the materials’ CO2 print is just saying one thing: less material in the product. You have to think more of the whole cycle, the whole life length, and the value that you build a product in a different way today.
— We’re also setting up a systematics, Inger shares. We have a set of design principles. The first is to design for reuse and repairability. Then, it’s about using more recycled content and materials in our new product. Looking at what we do today, we’re spending a lot. One of our biggest strategic initiatives, and one of the most important strategic shifts, is how we continue to keep the prices low, as well as becoming circular and reducing the climate footprint. If we look at our innovation portfolio today, a majority of the ongoing initiatives sit a lot in the area of material and the future of circular products. We spend a lot of headspace on cracking the future problems here, and we’re learning on the way.
— It’s also about prices you can afford; it doesn’t make a difference if you can’t afford the value, says Ejdemo. The sustainability focus started back around 2005, and today, you see a behaviour shift connected to it from consumers. Especially young consumers are very mindful of what they purchase, and whether they need something, and we’ve seen that the shift to secondhand has been dramatic in certain areas. It’s really fun to work with it today. We worked with these topics in the early 2000s as well, but it wasn’t as fun because it wasn’t really seen. Now, everyone has a concern; they look for something that is better, and try to look at themselves and their own behaviours when it comes to consumption.
How do you manage to balance affordability and quality?
—There’s no contradiction at all in that, Ejdemo states. Well-designed, well thought-through, and well-constructed products, using well-selected materials, done in a way so they can be produced efficiently, reach many and have the volumes and the scale. Quality is a driver for keeping costs down. If we don’t manage to maintain a good quality in what we do, the cost would be high, and there would be other costs connected to the product. When you manage to do something very clearly, thought-through, and well-designed, the quality just is there. It comes from that.
— We have to work until we crack it both. If we can use the same components in production, and we can have them flat-packed, it becomes more efficient. The smartness of making everything the same dimensions ensures efficiency in every other detail. That can secure creating a beautiful table, but it sits in the detail of understanding the full value chain, Inger shares.
Have you seen a shift from your producers that circularity is now not only a nice-to-have but a need-to-have? Has the conversation switched?
— We work, of course, with many different materials and products, and quite many different industries, and it differs. In some categories, we have a much more mature dialogue. When we come to them and say that we have these ambitions, with our size, we also want to be that positive force in society, Inger shares. She continues:
— A big part of our climate footprint is the glue in our shipboards, and we have been quite a driver to find bio-based or other alternatives. We now have a big innovation portfolio on glue, and it’s also fun to be a part of influencing changes in the dialogues with partners.
— We have a big influence and a huge responsibility, says Ejdemo. There are certain types of materials where you have to use the whole feedstock of material. It’s very hard for a small player, but we can help to do that. I talk a lot about the assembly of products, and I was part of the journey when we created the ’click’ solutions to assemble our furniture. That required another, tighter tolerance from a whole industry. It’s not connected to circularity, but it’s still the mentality of transforming, and the willingness from the different industries to transform things together. We have many suppliers whose business idea is to utilise a certain material, which we try to help with, to understand and to spread the knowledge. Everything has to start somewhere, and when it’s mature, it will spread. Today, I would say yes, everyone is very much aware.
— For each material we use, says Inger, we have a material direction for 2030. We also set more strategic directions for the materials and the innovation, and the development portfolio connected to them. From building the range, we commit to certain things, so that we know that we will have the scale to support the change needed, thanks to the collaboration with partners.
What will be the biggest material innovations for IKEA in the years to come?
— One of the specific projects is the one with glue, Inger shares. We are working on different solutions and want to continue this work because it has such a big impact. We have a lot of collaboration partners, including different universities, and a broader innovation network around the glues. It’s difficult for us to find innovative alternatives at scale with the right quality and price, so we keep track of all these opportunities and continue to develop. It’s now quite a broad portfolio of development initiatives at all different levels, with chemical experts and many others involved.
And what are the most pressing challenges for IKEA today?
— Sustainability in combination with a low price. Challenges will come and go, but this is a long-term one, because our belief is that sustainability will only happen when everyone can afford it. It cannot be something small for the few. We have a big responsibility with our scale, and it’s a fun and difficult challenge, both for the design and engineering departments — and very rewarding when we crack things, Inger concludes.
