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How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

ikea.com

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Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#121

Post by amiga386 »

Snild wrote: post #24
joshdavham wrote: post #9

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?

Those are the letters we have that are distinct from English. Not exotic to us, but yeah, "weird letters" is probably considered part of the international brand now. By the way, we consider them unique letters, not A and O with diacritics. The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ. Oh, and I just learned that we only officially added W in 2006. Before that, it was considered a variant of V. We still pronounce them the same,…

> The Swedish alphabet goes …XYZÅÄÖ.

IKEA sold that too: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/306072403869

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#122

Post by [deleted] »

dhosek wrote: post #55
joshdavham wrote: post #9

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?

Most likely. In the early 90s there was a knock-off of Ikea called Stør which used the ø for exoticism. I had assumed that it was a Danish company, but apparently, not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR (The store where I bought some of my first furniture from—off the 60 in City of Industry—was quite possibly the original location).

[deleted]

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#123

Post by nubinetwork »

dhosek wrote: post #55
joshdavham wrote: post #9

> preferably contain the letters Å, Ä or Ö Yes, but why prefer these letters? I don’t know Swedish. Is it because these diacritics make the names seem more exotic?

Most likely. In the early 90s there was a knock-off of Ikea called Stør which used the ø for exoticism. I had assumed that it was a Danish company, but apparently, not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STØR (The store where I bought some of my first furniture from—off the 60 in City of Industry—was quite possibly the original location).

> knock-off of ikea

We have one called jysk... They're doing alright.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#124

Post by namelosw »

fy20 wrote: post #13

For a Swede it must seem kind of strange to understand the product names. You see an ACORN toy, a NIGEL bookshelf, and the CROYDON sofa... which sounds like it belongs in a council estate flat. Definately more fun would be the Polish version. How many people can pronounce the BYDGOSZCZ sofa, the PRZEMYSŁAW bookcase and the PSZCZOŁA soft toy?

Just go to Polish IKEA and buy the Grzegorz table and Brzęczyszczykiewicz chairs …

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#125

Post by knollimar »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #79
usui wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can I find the answer to the question without reading punchy headers followed by paragraphs like > How We Leverage Naming > Our Naming Strategy, Explained > Why Swedish Is Important > The Bottom Line And unforgettable aphorisms like > It isn't just a name—it is the output of a scalable, globally coordinated, linguistically validated, Swedish-inspired naming framework designed to optimize brand consistency to…

How am I supposed to know what matters if they don't tell me, in an honest fashion?

the real caveat: those descriptions are genuinely load bearing

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#126

Post by zamadatix »

zeroq wrote: post #70

> Did you know that we name around 2,000-3,000 new products every year? It's more likely that the whole product catalog contains 2-3k products. [1][2][3] So no, you don't. [1] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/cat/products-products [2] https://lar5.com/ikea (~ 2200) [3] https://namingschemes.com/Ikea_Product_Names (~ 1300)

When [3] contains half as many as [2] it should be a good sign to take pause to consider both could be faaaar from exhaustive. [1] is just a link to a page of links, it doesn't really say anything about how many total named products there are. Meanwhile, https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/ranjithpanicker/ikea-global-... claims "34,932 unique global products" and Ikea Canada alone claims ~12k products https://www.ikea.com/ca/en/newsroom/corporate-news/ikea-cana...

Why should we treat a minor wiki page and some dude's personal site (who disagree with each other on totals) as authoritative proof Ikea is wrong about it's own catalog? Especially when it's not hard to find 1st/3rd party sources claiming an order of magnitude more products. Keep in mind, some things will also fall off the catalog over time.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#127

Post by fragmede »

nine_k wrote: post #35
fy20 wrote: post #13

For a Swede it must seem kind of strange to understand the product names. You see an ACORN toy, a NIGEL bookshelf, and the CROYDON sofa... which sounds like it belongs in a council estate flat. Definately more fun would be the Polish version. How many people can pronounce the BYDGOSZCZ sofa, the PRZEMYSŁAW bookcase and the PSZCZOŁA soft toy?

If the goal is something that reads weird for most Europeans, then try picking names from Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, or Welsh.

You really wanna get weird, there's those continents of Asia, Africa, and South America, full of different sounds to use for names. Ikea is Swedish, so they get to propagate Swedish culture to the rest of the world.

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#128

Post by hammock »

forgotmypasswor wrote: post #89
tverbeure wrote: post #15

> Every possible product name is carefully checked to avoid undesirable meanings in other languages, political or religious affiliations and fit into our global profile. I love the JERKER desk that I bought 26 years ago, so I assume this rule must be younger than that.

I was at IKEA once when they first came to America and there was a chair that was called the "assengråbben" or something like that. I heard a guy nearby telling the person with him "must be for the interns".

There is a lamp called Fartyg

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#129

Post by fuomag9 »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #79
usui wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how can I find the answer to the question without reading punchy headers followed by paragraphs like > How We Leverage Naming > Our Naming Strategy, Explained > Why Swedish Is Important > The Bottom Line And unforgettable aphorisms like > It isn't just a name—it is the output of a scalable, globally coordinated, linguistically validated, Swedish-inspired naming framework designed to optimize brand consistency to…

How am I supposed to know what matters if they don't tell me, in an honest fashion?

If the names are not load bearing, are they even names anymore?

Re: How does IKEA come up with names for its products?

#130

Post by rvba »

bcaulfield wrote: post #3

Amazing. A post asks a question in the title that I actually want answered, and then goes on to answer that question clearly and succinctly. Maybe the best corporate content I've seen this year.

It does not answer at all. 2000-3000 names per year?
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