Wednesday 5 January 2022

it'll only take an hour, she said


As I sat there Monday afternoon watching my wife valiantly struggle with putting together a flat packed drinks trolley that my in-laws had bought themselves over Christmas, I idly mused that IKEA had a lot to answer for.

But then I figured I was probably being unfair to the Swedes, that the construct-by-numbers drink storage utility in question and it's obscure, indecipherable instructions and vaguely aligned screw-holes hadn't in fact come from IKEA and that the Swedes probably hadn't actually invented the flat pack, although they'd certainly perfected the deconstructive art of it. 

And of tempting you in to their cavernous warehouse stores with the twin lure of flat-packed furniture stocked alongside frozen crayfish and Swedish meatballs.

So I Googled "who invented the flat pack"

Turns out it was IKEA after all. Specifically, a chap called Gillis Lundgren, in 1956. 

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