We made our quarterly pilgrimage to our local IKEA store in Linköping yesterday. This past week 3.5 Million Swedish households each received their copy of the 2010/2011 IKEA catalogue – which is an annual event comparable in social significance to a national holiday though perhaps not as important as Midsommar !!
IKEA (Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd) is still a privately held company. Many Swedish households have a sticker on their letterboxes saying “No advertising – thank you” but the variant which is fairly common is “No advertising -thank you but the IKEA catalogue with pleasure”
175 Million copies of the catalog in 27 languages will be distributed in 33 countries this year. Prices in the Swedish catalogue are guaranteed till 11th July next year. IKEA is iconic and ubiquitous of course but I note that my son studying in New York visits the New Jersey store (free bus from Manhattan) just to get his traditional Swedish lunches.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/sv_SE/restaurant/restaurant2.html
Surprisingly it is Iceland which has the most stores per inhabitant !!
| Country | Debut | No. Stores | Population | Stores per Million People |
| Iceland | 1981 | 1 | 318 006 | 3,145 |
| Sweden | 1958 | 17 | 9 354 462 | 1,817 |
| Cyprus | 2007 | 1 | 798 045 | 1,253 |
| Norway | 1963 | 5 | 4 899 300 | 1,021 |
| Denmark | 1969 | 5 | 5 543 819 | 0,902 |
| Switzerland | 1973 | 7 | 7 782 900 | 0,899 |
| Finland | 1996 | 4 | 5 367 188 | 0,745 |
| The Netherlands | 1978 | 12 | 16 609 848 | 0,722 |
| Austria | 1977 | 6 | 8 356 707 | 0,718 |
| Belgium | 1984 | 6 | 10 827 519 | 0,554 |
| Germany | 1974 | 45 | 81 757 600 | 0,550 |
| France | 1981 | 28 | 65 447 374 | 0,428 |
| Hong Kong | 1975 | 3 | 7 055 071 | 0,425 |
| Singapore | 1978 | 2 | 4 987 600 | 0,401 |
| Czech Republic | 1991 | 4 | 10 506 813 | 0,381 |
| Greece | 2001 | 4 | 11 306 183 | 0,354 |
| Spain | 1980 | 15 | 46 030 109 | 0,326 |
| Canada | 1976 | 11 | 34 224 000 | 0,321 |
| United Arab Emirates | 1991 | 2 | 6 888 888 | 0,290 |
| United Kingdom | 1987 | 18 | 62 041 708 | 0,290 |
| Kuwait | 1984 | 1 | 3 520 000 | 0,284 |
| Italy | 1989 | 17 | 60 380 912 | 0,282 |
| Portugal | 2004 | 3 | 11 317 192 | 0,265 |
| Israel | 2001 | 2 | 7 602 400 | 0,263 |
| New Zealand | TBA | 0 | 4 390 090 | 0,228 |
| Ireland | 2009 | 1 | 4 456 000 | 0,224 |
| Australia | 1975 | 5 | 22 439 171 | 0,223 |
| Poland | 1991 | 8 | 38 192 000 | 0,209 |
| Hungary | 1990 | 2 | 10 005 000 | 0,200 |
| Slovakia | 1992 | 1 | 5 379 455 | 0,186 |
| Taiwan | 1994 | 4 | 23 119 772 | 0,173 |
| Serbia | 2011 | 0 | 7 334 935 | 0,136 |
| Bulgaria | 2011 | 0 | 7 563 710 | 0,132 |
| United States | 1985 | 37 | 310 101 000 | 0,119 |
| Saudi Arabia | 1983 | 3 | 27 136 977 | 0,111 |
| Dominican Republic | 2010 | 1 | 10 090 000 | 0,099 |
| Russia | 2000 | 11 | 141 927 297 | 0,078 |
| Turkey | 2005 | 4 | 72 561 312 | 0,055 |
| Romania | 2007 | 1 | 22 215 421 | 0,045 |
| Japan | 1974 | 5 | 127 420 000 | 0,039 |
| Malaysia | 1996 | 1 | 28 310 000 | 0,035 |
| Ukraine | 2011 | 0 | 45 888 000 | 0,022 |
| Thailand | 2011 | 0 | 66 404 688 | 0,015 |
| China | 1998 | 6 | 1 338 612 968 | 0,004 |
The k2p blog 