An uninspiring picture of an uninspiring place on an uninspiring day. Ah, but City won. Ikea facts:
Ikea employs 150,000 people, or “co-workers”, as they are called.
Ikea is named after the initials of its founder, Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, the farm on which grew up and Agunnaryd, the nearby village.
Ingvar Kamprad, the founder, first started selling matchboxes as a child, before selling fountain pens, cigarette lighters and nylon stockings. The company was incorporated in 1943.
Its upholstered furniture is usually named after Swedish place names, its chairs after Swedish men's names, its garden furniture after Swedish islands, its curtains after Swedish women's names.
Last year it distributed 2.5 billion little wooden dowels, which hold its furniture together, and 50 million Allen keys
Ikea has 287 stores in 26 countries.
Ikea estimates it has sold 11.6 billion Swedish meatballs and 1.2 billion hotdogs to its British customers since it opened in the UK in 1987.
UK customers have bought 12.8 million mattresses from Ikea since 1987, nearly one for every two households in the UK. An estimated one in five children in Britain have been conceived in an Ikea bed.
Hmmmmm.