VIDEO LISTENING FLAT-PACK PAGE 101
6B Video Listening
The history of flat-pack furniture
Hi there, I’m Daniel. I’ve just bought
a new book case. All I need to do is put it together. It shouldn’t be
difficult. After all, all I need to do is follow the instructions.
OK…this might not be as easy as I
thought. I don’t know why I’m surprised. People have warned me about flat-pack
furniture!
Almost everybody has a story about complicated
instructions, and missing parts. But it’s incredibly popular and today most
people own at least one piece of flat-pack furniture. So, how has this concept
come to dominate the entire furniture industry? Well, the story begins with a
man called Erie J. Sauder.
Sauder owned a furniture business in
Ohio in the 1930s. He made benches, but with the spare wood he made small
coffee tables. Because Sauder used leftover wood the tables were cheap, but
high quality. In 1940, two travelling salesman noticed these tables. They
really liked them. So they took one and displayed it at a furniture show in
Chicago. A few days later, they returned with an order for 25,000 tables!
Sauder had to transport all of these
new tables to Chicago, so he invented furniture that he could take apart and
put into boxes. This made it easy to transport, and people could put it
together at home. He patented the idea in 1951 and the ready-to-assemble
furniture industry was born.
But the idea didn’t become popular
immediately. Five years later, a Swedish man named Gillis Lundgren was moving
some furniture. He had never heard of ready-to-assemble furniture, and he was
finding it very difficult to fit a table into his car. But then he realised
that if he took the legs off he would be able to put it in the car and put it
together again at home. He discussed the idea with his employers, a small,
local firm … called IKEA. They loved it and decided to focus their entire
business on it.
IKEA launched their first flat-pack
product in 1956. Today, it’s the largest furniture retailer in the world,
generating sales of over 27 billion euros a year. So it’s safe to say that the
flat-pack concept has been a huge success.
Today almost everybody has a flat-pack
wardrobe, table or bookcase. But did you know there are entire flat-pack rooms?
You can have a flat-pack bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen. You can even build an
entire house out of flat-pack!
There are many reasons why this type of
furniture has been successful. Manufacturers are able to produce it quickly and
transport it easily, so it’s cheaper and more convenient than other furniture.
And while it might look complicated at first it is generally very well-designed
so it’s very, very easy to put together. In fact, anyone can do it!
I’m nearly finished and I’ve only been
working on it for a few minutes! I haven’t used these bits, but they’re
probably not important. So, what do you think?
