Even the best ideas can lead to failure if the team doesn’t test the idea in the real world. For decades, people have furnished their homes with IKEA products because of the brand’s reputation for affordable, practical, yet stylish products.
Brand loyalty is high since IKEA delivers what its customers expect. Despite IKEA’s track record, its team occasionally makes mistakes. In the late 1990s, a failed foray into inflatable furnishing exposed how sometimes an innovative idea isn’t enough.
An exciting idea and promising beginning
Swedish teen entrepreneur Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in the 1940s, originally as a small mail-order business selling pens and wallets. By 1948, he started selling furniture, but packing and shipping furniture mail-order was a major pain point. This led to IKEA becoming an innovator and disruptor. It developed quality flat-pack furnishing like shelves and tables. Fast forward to the mid-1990s, Kamprad and his team found it challenging to create a durable, comfortable upholstered sofa that could be shipped flat-pack.
Meanwhile, Swedish designer Jan Dranger had an interest in inflatable furniture dating back to the 1970s when he and his design partner created a range of inflatable easy chairs and mattresses that were briefly sold by the Swedish Cooperative Union (KF). Unfortunately, these furnishings deflated quickly, but Dranger persisted in developing inflatables using better materials and new techniques.
In the early 1990s, he approached IKEA and met privately with Kamprad. He had prototypes for inflatable furniture, including a sofa. The idea seemed promising since this sofa was lightweight, could be shipped flat-pack, and consumers could easily assemble it at home using an ordinary hair dryer. The idea addressed one of Kamprad’s biggest pain points.
Several IKEA managers were invited to an unveiling of these prototypes. When they arrived, they saw inflatable sofas draped in loose covers. The covers made the sofa more attractive and also helped maintain its shape.
As former IKEA business area manager Tomas Paulsson told the IKEA Museum, “No one was allowed to look underneath the furniture, but we were allowed to sit on it. It felt a bit like an inflatable mattress or water bed.”
Dranger didn’t want to share technical details before signing a contract with IKEA. In theory, the inflatable sofa required 85% less material than a standard sofa, and the plastic material used was 100% recyclable. Especially notable for the team at IKEA, the inflatable sofa reduced transport volume by 90% compared to their existing products. IKEA formed a spin-off company, SoftAir, in anticipation of the line’s success.
In 1998, the Toronto Star reported that a consumer could bicycle home with an unassembled sofa in their backpack, then walk upstairs to their apartment and quickly assemble it.
Laurence Martocq, an IKEA spokesperson at that time, said: “We expect the line to appeal to university students, young people living in apartments and condos and first-time home buyers… We’re also targeting people who look to us for innovations and new trends.”
IKEA launched the A.I.R line in 1998, including an inflatable sofa, easy chair, and an ottoman. The furnishings came with a ten-year warranty, washable slipcovers, and a patch kit. The design featured a series of small air pockets or compartments, so damage to one pouch wouldn’t cause the whole thing to quickly deflate.
How the A.I.R. line….deflated
First, according to Paulsson, it cost more to manufacture the A.I.R. products than originally anticipated. And when they launched the line in IKEA stores, shoppers reacted in unexpected ways.
One selling point was that it was very lightweight. A promotional illustration portrayed someone lifting the sofa with one hand to vacuum underneath. In the stores, this selling point also proved to be a downside. The sofas would easily slide around if someone bumped against them.
Shoppers reportedly picked them up and moved them or even tossed them around the showrooms. According to the IKEA museum, an IKEA team member said they looked like “a group of swollen hippos” compared to the other sleek designs in the stores.
IKEA project manager Lena Brandt Persson said, “Customers found it so much fun that even adults would jump up and down on the sofas.”
It didn’t get better once the inflatables made it to the shopper’s home. The instructions didn’t clearly warn the buyer to use the cold setting on their hair dryer, so some inflated their new sofa with hot air. Not only did this pose a risk of melting the plastic, but it also resulted in the sofas deflating as the inflated hot air cooled down.
It turned out many people didn’t love inflatable furnishings as much as they hoped. When sitting on the chair or sofa, a sudden movement could cause an embarrassing squeaking sound.
Too many of the A.I.R. products were returned. In September 1999, IKEA announced it was ending its involvement in the SoftAir spin-off company but continued to sell the designs. In 2013, they stopped selling the A.I.R line.
Key takeaways and lessons learned
The story of IKEA’s inflatable furniture launch flop can serve as a cautionary tale for other inventors, designers, and entrepreneurs. Sometimes, enthusiasm for an exciting concept can fall short if you don’t back it up with testing and market research.
Deviation from core principles?
Consumers trust IKEA in part because its design honors five core principles: form, function, quality, sustainability, and low prices. The A.I.R. line was an interesting concept. In reality it didn’t hold true to these core principle according to Ikea’s global design head, Marcus Engman, who admits he was partially responsible for it.
He told Sidney News, “This is one of the biggest mistakes in Ikea’s history. An amazing fiasco.”
They missed many of the product’s flaws. So many of the problems would have been obvious if people tested the prototypes for longer, facing real-world challenges.
For example, the team saw the very light weight as a benefit, but a few days of watching the sofa slide around an office or living room may have proved otherwise. They would have also noticed how the furnishings would gradually deflate despite the innovative design.
Engman also commented that they were excited about a product, but didn’t really know how the general public would respond. The designs may not have fit many people’s homes.
“If you want to do new engineering maybe put it into something people can relate to from the beginning instead of something that is such a new form because it’s hard to relate to,” he said.
The missing link: Where product testing failed
The collapse of IKEA’s A.I.R. inflatable furniture line demonstrates the importance of product and testing, even if you have an innovative idea.
Despite promising sustainability benefits—85% less material and 90% lighter shipping weight versus traditional sofas—the series ignored critical market realities. According to the IKEA Museum, prototypes were tested in controlled labs but never subjected to real-world user scenarios.
For example:
- Engineers used ideal conditions (e.g., precise inflation methods) but overlooked how customers might misuse the product. Many users inflated their products using the hot air setting from hair dryers, causing warping and accelerated wear.
- IKEA assumed users would value eco-friendliness over convenience. They failed to anticipate that daily re-inflation and valve leaks would frustrate customers. The “pffft” sounds when sitting became a notorious pain point.
- The 1990s saw IKEA expanding into markets like the U.S. and Asia, yet no adjustments were made for regional preferences.
How to do thorough product testing
This case study illustrates why product testing in real-world settings is so important for anyone interested in international trade. This includes cross-cultural validation and iterative testing.
Products must be tested in the actual environments of target markets with diverse user groups. IKEA’s oversight of these steps turned even an industry pioneer into a cautionary tale.
Rigorous processes would have flagged:
- Frequency – How often users would need to re-inflate (daily vs. weekly).
- Intensity – How real-world stressors like pets, children, or humidity affect material integrity.
- Technical – How well did the valve perform in varied home environments
[This content is an excerpt reproduced from the FITTskills Products & Services for a Global Market course]
Prototype and test marketing offer opportunities to test the product and its performance, and to put the product into a limited, but real-life field situation to collect data for product and marketing plan modifications or improvements. Refinements to initial prototypes, concepts and ideas resulting from customer feedback can also allow engineers, procurement managers and production designers to better quantify the projected unit costs for the product when it finally reaches production.
Some techniques that can be used to evaluate consumer response to new or adapted products are:
- The use of select groups of product users to test prototypes (often referred to as beta testing)
- Tasting panels (for food products)
- Product demonstrations at select venues
- Follow-up with consumers after purchase
As part of product development and adaptation, product testing is carried out throughout the product life cycle to ensure compliance with specifications and regulations. There is a wide range of product tests.
Learn more about how and why to test products thoroughly BEFORE bringing them to market.
Get Test Marketing and the 15 Point Market/Concept Assessment Questions templates, the full Product Testing Process and much more – explore Products & Services for a Global Market
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