#513 - VO - Jesper Brodin - IKEA - A $40 billion revenue empire built with no bank loans

Retrouvez l'épisode en version française ici : https://www.gdiy.fr/podcast/jesper-brodin-vf/

Most people see IKEA as a furniture retailer.

They're not wrong, but they're missing half the story.

IKEA is also one of the world's biggest food companies. They have a massive investment arm managing billions in renewable energy. And they’ve pulled off what everyone else says is impossible: growing while cutting emissions.

Jesper Brodin is an IKEA man through and through.

He knows it inside and out, every product line, every market, every challenge.

At 26, he was the only person who applied to run IKEA Pakistan.

Thirty years later, he's been leading the 40-billion-euro Swedish giant with 170,000 employees for eight years through a pandemic, geopolitical chaos, war, and hyperinflation.

In 2020, IKEA wasn't selling online.

Six weeks later, all stores had gone digital.

A two-year plan compressed into 42 days. 55,000 days of closure worldwide and a turnover that fell by only 4%.

The company even made a profit, to the point of repaying all the state aid it received during the crisis.

But his biggest achievement might be proving the trade-off is a myth.

Under his leadership, IKEA grew by 24% and bet 4.2 billion euros on renewable energy.

An attempt to prove that a furniture giant can grow without proportionally increasing its environmental footprint.

In this episode, Jesper reveals:

• How do you grow without ever taking a bank loan?
• Why designing a €19 chair that requires more excellence than a €300 one
• How to digitize a several billion company in 6 weeks instead of 2 years
• Why hierarchy is the enemy of speed and what they do about it
• The IKEA’s "side" businesses that are worth billions

A masterclass in leadership and sustainability with a CEO who spent 30 years proving that business success and planetary responsibility aren't opposites, but fuel for each other.

You can contact Jesper on Linkedin.

TIMELINE:

• 00:00:00 : First day on the job: a kidnapping
• 00:13:10 : How do you know it's time to quit?
• 00:23:31 : The pandemic that digitized IKEA in six weeks
• 00:35:37 : The CEO who does the dishes / Nothing is slower than hierarchy
• 00:48:12 : Sustainability doesn't have to cost more
• 01:05:24 : The bookshelf that explains how IKEA works
• 01:17:05 : The democratic design formula
• 01:26:30 : The blueprint for opening an IKEA store
• 01:43:34 : The side business worth billions
• 01:52:17 : The car-based model evolves
• 02:02:35 : Regrets of inaction

We referred to previous GDIY episodes :

• #510 - Carole Benaroya - Kujten - La reine du cachemire
• #496 - Sébastien Kopp - VEJA - Faire du business autrement
• #467 - Christel Heydemann - Orange - Garder le cap pour réussir dans un marché en rupture permanente
• #461 - Sébastien Bazin - PDG du groupe Accor - Diriger un groupe coté en bourse sans ordinateur
• #234 - Amandine Merle Julia - Plum Living - Pimper IKEA pour proposer un design d’intérieur accessible à tous

A few recent episodes in English :

• #500 - Reid Hoffman - LinkedIn, Paypal - How to master humanity’s most powerful invention
• #487 - VO - Anton Osika - Lovable - Internet, Business, and AI: Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again
• #475 - VO - Shane Parrish - Farnam Street - Clear Thinking: The Decision-Making Expert
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