The story of a beloved IKEA bag - IKEA Museum

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The Story of IKEA

Beloved bag

A friend through thick and thin.

Listen to the article

9 min

After more than 30 years in the IKEA range, it’s one of the most used bags in the world. It’s big and strong, and pretty much anything will fit inside, whether you’re shopping, moving, doing the laundry or going to the beach. An iconic tote bag that has also inspired new creations by everyone from keen DIYers to luxury fashion designers.

Do you have a FRAKTA bag at home? Most people have one or more of these blue classics, and they are used in all kinds of different ways. It was originally made to provide IKEA customers with a reliable bag to carry their new stuff home in. Since then, millions of people have come up with imaginative ways to use FRAKTA. Apple pickers and recycling collectors, parents with young children, football coaches – the list is endless. And it can carry heavy loads – FRAKTA does after all mean ‘to freight’ in Swedish. When the New York City authorities introduced a rule that all dogs on public transport had to be in a bag, inventive owners of large dogs could soon be seen carrying them in FRAKTA bags with holes cut out for the legs.

Why not plant in a FRAKTA rather than a bulky pallet collar?

Ingvar’s idea

The origins of FRAKTA can be traced back to the 1960s, when IKEA started selling more and more small A carrying needThe origins of the yellow bag and its blue companion FRAKTA can be traced back to the Kungens Kurva store in Stockholm. It was here that IKEA first began selling smaller home furnishing products at low prices, back in the 1960s. It was a great success, and it soon led to the opening of a department called ACCENTEN. The idea for a kind of broader marketplace with all kinds of products for the house and home developed and grew. Finally, under legendary businessman Rainer Alfström, the MARKNADEN department opened – a predecessor to today’s Market Hall on an IKEA store’s ground floor, offering everything from kitchen products and cushions to candles and light bulbs. In the 1960s and ’70s, MARKNADEN sold all sorts of little and sometimes even big things, like small swimming pools. Rainer Alfström saw a business opportunity in everything. If IKEA sold towels, surely it could sell soap as well? If IKEA sold music centres and stereo systems, why not vinyl records? Or toilet paper to go with the bathroom shelves? (Things got out of hand after a while and Ingvar Kamprad put his foot down. He ordered that the range should be limited, in a historic decision that still applies today.)The idea for the yellow bag came when Ingvar Kamprad wanted customers to be able to start shopping from the moment they entered the store. They could pick up small home furnishing products in the showroom areas, such as bedding in the bed department and scatter cushions among the sofas, before reaching the Market Hall. The idea was both to inspire and to tempt customers to buy things. The problem was that there wasn’t anything to carry the products around in. And that’s where the idea for the yellow bag and the blue FRAKTA was born.">home furnishing products<br>at the new IKEA store in Kungens Kurva, Stockholm, Sweden. In 1986, Ingvar Kamprad and his then assistant, Sten Lundén, decided to look at what actually happened when the small items were carried from their shelves and bins to the store exit. At the time, each store had its own solution. The platform trolleys that customers used in the self-serve area were standard everywhere. But for smaller products like tealights, duvet covers and glasses, there were usually only small plastic baskets or bags that were too small for many of the items. Customers had to carry a lot of stuff in their arms, which was heavy, awkward work. Ingvar and Sten noticed that many customers gave up half way, leaving behind a lot of items they couldn’t be bothered to carry to the checkout.

When IKEA began selling home furnishing accessories like block candles and kitchen utensils at its new store in Kungens Kurva in the 1960s, something was needed to carry the items in. Like a basket or a bag.

They studied customers and their behaviour in about ten stores, and came to the conclusion that it was, as Ingvar put it, “a deplorable experience”. He later explained that this was what prompted IKEA to make a large bag to carry on the shoulder, hang on a platform trolley, or carry in your hand. Head of purchasing Lars Göran Peterson, or LGP as he’s known at IKEA, was tasked with measuring many of the items in the range that could be carried. This enabled him to work out an optimum size for the bag.

On a trip to Taiwan, Ingvar Kamprad and LGP found a suitable manufacturer. They had specified, for...