Here Are Some Secrets To IKEA's Amazing Store Design

How do you sell 9,500 single-brand home furnishing products in single store without being too overwhelming?

You do it in a very big and extremely well-designed store.

The only company that has pulled this off is IKEA, which has opened 345 retail locations and is expanding rapidly around the world. The company's $38 billion in annual revenue is larger than the GDP of Serbia, and it aims to reach $50 billion by 2020.

We recently visited the IKEA in Brooklyn and were blown away by the shopping experience. It's not that it's all fun or that IKEA products are that great - they're worth it if you know what you're doing but can be annoyingly shoddy. What impressed me was that the IKEA shopping experience was sort of fun and certainly worthwhile, with thoughtful design that gave me a favorable impression of the brand and led me to buy more.