Ikea
The world famous catalog is discontinued
Ikea catalogs will no longer be produced with immediate effect.
© Grzegorz Czapski / Shutterstock.com
Over and over: The Swedish furniture store Ikea is discontinuing its world-famous catalog. The current 70th edition will be the last.
It has been hard to imagine millions of households without it for many decades, but the current 70th edition of the Ikea catalog will also be the last. The Swedish furniture store announced this decision on Monday. According to a press release, the company has become more digital and has found new ways to reach people. Customer behavior and media consumption have changed. One will now "deal intensively with the further development of future customer communication".
The end of the catalog had been indicated for a long time. Ikea boss Jesper Brodin (52) said in an interview with "Welt" at the beginning of October that the catalog is now much less used and in demand. The now 70th edition was no longer automatically sent to customers, but you had to order it yourself. 80 percent of customers nowadays would start their shopping experience without a catalog online.
The first Ikea catalog was created in 1951 and 285,000 copies were printed with 68 pages each, at that time exclusively in Swedish. In 2016, the year with the highest circulation, 200 million copies of the catalog in 69 different versions and 32 languages were sold in more than 50 countries. In 2021, Ikea will now close the catalog chapter.