00:00Up until this point, though, sales were modest, but everything changed when Ingvar discovered
00:04an opportunity to buy office chairs at a significant discount from a local school board.
00:09He saw an opportunity here to turn these chairs into a source of profit, so he did some market
00:14research and found that office workers would be willing to purchase these chairs for their homes.
00:18Suddenly, he had an idea for a whole new type of business model. Why not sell furniture that
00:24was inspired by office items? And that's exactly what he did. The first product to
00:29come out of this initiative was a chair that was modeled after the office chairs that he
00:34purchased from the school board. It sold extremely well, and it gave Ingvar the confidence to expand
00:39this concept into a full range of furniture products. By the late 1960s, IKEA had become a
00:45household name in Sweden, and it was ready to take its business to the next level. The first step in
00:51doing this, though, was to set up a manufacturing facility, which Ingvar accomplished by purchasing
00:56several factories. But this soon led to a shortage of raw materials. After all, the company had
01:02expanded so rapidly that it now needed more wood than any single supplier could give it.
01:07So in 1968, Ingvar took another step forward and opened a sawmill. This was a pivotal moment for
01:14the company because it allowed IKEA to manufacture its own products instead of relying on other companies
01:20to produce them.
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