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IKEA
宜家家居

The Complete History & Strategy of IKEA
宜家的完整历史和战略
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IKEA may be the most singular company we’ve ever studied on Acquired. They’re a globally scaled, $50B annual revenue company with no direct competitors — yet have only ~5% market share. They’re one of the largest retailers in the world — yet sell only their own products. They generate a few billion in free cash flow every year — yet have no shareholders. And oh yeah, they also sell hot dogs cheaper than Costco! (Sort of.)
宜家可能是我们在《收购》杂志上研究过的最奇特的公司。他们是一家年收入达 500 亿美元的全球规模公司，没有直接竞争对手，但市场份额却只有约 5%。他们是全球最大的零售商之一，但只销售自己的产品。他们每年产生数十亿美元的自由现金流，但却没有股东。对了，他们卖的热狗还比好市多便宜！(算是吧）。

Tune in for an episode flat-packed with counterintuitive lessons about how this folksy mail order business from the Swedish countryside came into your living rooms (and bedrooms and dining rooms and kitchens and bathrooms and patios and garages and backyards) all over the globe!
敬请收看本期节目，我们将为您讲述这个来自瑞典乡村的民间邮购公司是如何走进全球各地的客厅（卧室、餐厅、厨房、浴室、庭院、车库和后院）的！

Transcript: (disclaimer: may contain unintentionally confusing, inaccurate and/or amusing transcription errors)
脚本：（免责声明：可能包含无意中造成的混乱、不准确和/或有趣的转录错误）

Ben: Welcome to the Fall 2024 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies and the stories and playbooks behind them. I’m Ben Gilbert.
本：欢迎收听 2024 年秋季播客季《收购》（Acquired），这是一个关于伟大公司及其背后的故事和游戏规则的播客。我是本-吉尔伯特。

David: I’m David Rosenthal.
大卫：我是大卫-罗森塔尔。

Ben: And we are your hosts When you’re running an in-person retail establishment, you know one thing for sure. If people are going to buy your products, they have to be in your store, and more time in your store generally means they buy more product. What is a great way to increase time in-store? Meatballs, David, meatballs.
本：我们是你的主人 当你经营一家实体零售店时，你肯定知道一件事。如果人们要购买你的产品，他们就必须在你的店里，而在你店里停留的时间越长，通常意味着他们购买的产品越多。增加店内停留时间的好方法是什么？肉丸，大卫，肉丸。

David: Meatballs and hot dogs.
大卫：肉丸和热狗。

Ben: And hot dogs. We’ll get there. Listeners, today we dive into IKEA, the company that sells over a billion Swedish meatballs a year and a lot of furniture and homewares to go with it.
还有热狗我们马上就到。听众朋友们，今天我们将深入探讨宜家，这家每年销售超过十亿瑞典肉丸的公司，以及与之配套的大量家具和家居用品。

IKEA is an 81-year-old company. People visit their stores nearly 900 million times a year. And it’s quirky as hell. If you’ve ever shopped there, you’re familiar with the crazy maze of showrooms.
宜家是一家拥有 81 年历史的公司。每年有近 9 亿人次光顾他们的商店。宜家家居的风格也是千奇百怪。如果你曾在那里购物，你一定对疯狂的迷宫展厅不陌生。

David, I spent five hours inside the Seattle store last weekend. I went there to prepare for this episode. I didn’t realize that I was going to spend the whole day there, but that’s what happens when you go to IKEA.
大卫，上周末我在西雅图店里待了五个小时。我去那里是为了准备这期节目。我没想到我会在那里待上一整天，但这就是去宜家的后果。

David: God bless you. Did you make use of Småland?
上帝保佑你。你利用过斯莫兰吗？

Ben: I went with a friend who had a kid old enough to take advantage of Småland, so yes.
本：我和一个朋友一起去的，他有一个足够大的孩子可以去斯莫兰玩，所以是的。

David: Nice.
大卫：不错。

Ben: Perhaps you know the relationship test of, can you make it through IKEA together? And that’s just at the store. Then you get home and you have to assemble all that flat-pack furniture you just bought. But the furniture, it does look good. Even though it’s extremely inexpensive and you do have to build it yourself using the funny diagrams with the funny little man and the funny labels, it ends up looking pretty good.
本：也许你知道 "你们能一起穿过宜家吗？"这个关系测试。这还只是在商场里。然后回到家，你还得把刚买的平板家具组装起来。不过，这些家具看起来确实不错。尽管价格极其低廉，而且你还得自己动手，用滑稽的小人和滑稽的标签，用滑稽的图解来组装，但最终看起来还是很不错的。

David: Hell yeah, it does.
大卫：当然，确实如此。

Ben: And the results of this crazy stew of ingredients is that IKEA has become the world’s largest furniture retailer and one of the largest retailers, period. Today, we’ll examine why it has worked so well, how its founder became the 8th wealthiest person in the world before shifting his ownership into a foundation, and how all the little innovations have just added up and refined the concept along the way.
本：宜家家居就是在这些疯狂成分的炖煮下，成为世界上最大的家具零售商和最大的零售商之一。今天，我们将探讨宜家为何如此成功，其创始人是如何在将所有权转移到基金会之前就成为世界第八大富豪的，以及所有的小创新是如何在这一过程中不断累加并完善宜家的理念的。

Whether it’s the POÄNG chair, the LACK shelf, the BILLY bookcase, it is very likely that you have something from IKEA in your house right now. This is the story of a mission to create simple, well-designed, low-cost furniture accessible to as many people as possible, taken to its absolute logical extreme.
无论是 POÄNG 椅子、LACK 书架还是 BILLY 书柜，你的家中很可能就有宜家的产品。宜家家居的使命就是为尽可能多的人提供设计简单、价格低廉的家具，并将这一使命发挥到极致。

David: Totally.
大卫：完全正确。

Ben: Well listeners, after this episode, come discuss it with us on Slack and check out ACQ2, our second show, where we just had Luis von Ahn as a guest, the CEO of Duolingo.
本：好了，听众朋友们，这期节目结束后，请到 Slack 上与我们讨论，并关注我们的第二期节目 ACQ2，我们刚刚请到了 Duolingo 的首席执行官路易斯-冯-安（Luis von Ahn）作为嘉宾。

His company story is pretty unlikely, given most investors assumed you could not build a large business in either the education or language learning market specifically, and Luis has some of the most practical advice I’ve ever heard for anyone building a consumer startup, and have sent it already to a bunch of friends who are building consumer companies. So go check it out, ACQ2 available in any podcast player.
考虑到大多数投资者都认为你不可能在教育或语言学习市场上建立起大型企业，他的公司故事是非常不可能的。路易斯给我提供了一些最实用的建议，供建立消费类初创公司的人参考，我已经把这些建议发给了很多正在建立消费类公司的朋友。快去看看吧，任何播客播放器都可以收听 ACQ2。

If you haven’t taken the Acquired 2024 survey yet, please do. It is open for another week, and we would greatly appreciate your feedback. Click the link in the show notes or go to acquired.fm/survey for your chance to win some sweet Meta Ray-bans or an ACQ dad hat.
如果您还没有参加 Acquired 2024 调查，请参加。我们将非常感谢您的反馈。点击节目注释中的链接或访问 acquired.fm/survey，您就有机会赢得可爱的 Meta Ray-bans 或 ACQ 爸爸帽。

David: We might need to add a POÄNG chair or something to that.
大卫：我们可能需要增加一个 POÄNG 椅子或其他东西。

Ben: Actually, that’d be extremely economical for us to offer.
本：事实上，我们提供这样的服务非常经济实惠。

David: Yes, it would be cheaper than the Ray-bans.
大卫：是的，比雷朋眼镜便宜。

Ben: Maybe we’ll even throw in some at-home assembly for you and really gross it up.
本：说不定我们还能为你提供一些在家组装的服务，让你大开眼界。

David: Well, as we will discuss later in the episode, including delivery and everything that comes with e-commerce. I don’t know if it’ll be cheaper or it will certainly be impacting IKEA’s margins.
大卫：嗯，正如我们稍后将讨论的，包括送货和电子商务带来的一切。我不知道它是否会更便宜，或者它肯定会影响宜家的利润率。

Ben: It’s true. Well, before we dive in, we want to briefly thank our presenting partner, J.P. Morgan Payments.
本：没错。在正式开始之前，我们想简单感谢一下我们的合作伙伴摩根大通支付公司（J.P. Morgan Payments）。

David: Just like how we say every company has a story, every company story is powered by payments, and J.P. Morgan Payments is a part of so many of their journeys from seed to IPO and beyond.
大卫：就像我们说每家公司都有自己的故事一样，每家公司的故事都是由支付驱动的，摩根大通支付公司参与了许多公司从种子到上市以及更多的历程。

Ben: With that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies we discuss, and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only.
本：有鉴于此，本节目并非投资建议。大卫和我可能在我们讨论的公司中有投资，本节目仅供参考和娱乐之用。

David: Unfortunately, there is literally no possible way for us to have investments or for any human being to have investments in the companies that we discuss here. But we start in the small town of Älmhult, Sweden, which is in the province of Småland, which despite its name is not so small, but rather a large rural area in the south of Sweden, not too far from Denmark.
大卫：不幸的是，我们或任何人都不可能对我们在这里讨论的公司进行投资。但我们从瑞典的阿姆胡尔特小镇开始，它位于斯莫兰省（Småland），虽然名字叫阿姆胡尔特，但其实并不小，而是瑞典南部的一个大农村地区，离丹麦并不太远。

Småland, again, despite its cutesy, friendly IKEA-like sounding name, is a pretty tough place. It’s rural, it’s agrarian. The soil is pretty barren. It’s really rocky. There are a lot of forests and timber. Timber wood, foreshadowing maybe one day what will come out of this province in Sweden.
尽管名字听起来像宜家一样可爱、友好，但斯莫兰还是一个相当艰苦的地方。这里是农村，是农业区。土壤非常贫瘠。多岩石。有很多森林和木材木材，预示着也许有一天，瑞典的这个省会出产什么。

Ben: It’s also cold.
本：也很冷。

David: It’s Sweden. It’s really cold.
这是瑞典。真的很冷

Ben: Tough place to grow up.
本：成长的地方很艰苦。

David: Totally. The farmers in Småland, though, really have to work hard to scrape out their existence. There’s actually a word in Småland called Lista, which means making due with an absolute minimum of resources appropriate to the province and appropriate to IKEA as we shall see.
大卫：完全正确。不过，斯莫兰的农民真的要努力工作才能维持生计。实际上，在斯莫兰有个词叫 "Lista"，意思是用绝对最低限度的资源来维持生计，这既符合该省的情况，也符合宜家的情况。

So it is there on a farm in Småland in March of 1926 when our protagonist, Feodor Ingvar Kamprad (or just Ingvar as he is known), is born. He’s born for the region on a family farm named Älmtaryd in an area about 20 kilometers outside of Älmhult called Agunnaryd, which, apologies to all of our Swedish friends if we butchered those. I listened to a lot of pronunciations to try to get this right.
1926 年 3 月，我们的主人公费奥多尔-英格瓦-坎普拉德（Feodor Ingvar Kamprad，简称英格瓦）出生在斯莫兰（Småland）的一个农场里。他出生在该地区一个名叫阿姆塔里德（Älmtaryd）的家庭农场里，农场位于阿姆胡尔特（Älmhult）外约 20 公里处，名叫阿古纳里德（Agunnaryd），如果我们篡改了这个名字，请向所有瑞典朋友道歉。我听了很多发音，试图把它弄对。

Now, to give you even more of a sense of this land that we’re talking about, Älmhult, the bustling local metropolis, I don’t know what the population was in 1926, but in 2010 the population of Älmhult, the big city, was 9000 people. That is including IKEA’s major, major presence there in that town today, including [...], the IKEA museum, the IKEA hotel, et cetera. I’m imagining maybe 1000 people live there at this time. Agunnaryd, the area where the farm is in 2010, do you know what its total population is?
我不知道1926年的人口是多少，但在2010年，大城市阿姆胡尔特的人口是9000人。这还包括宜家如今在该镇的主要业务，包括[......]、宜家博物馆、宜家酒店等等。我估计现在大概有 1000 人住在那里。2010年，农场所在的阿古纳里德地区的总人口是多少？

Ben: Low hundreds?
本：几百块？

David: Two hundred and twenty people.
大卫：220 人。

Ben: All right, so he is in the sticks.
本：好吧，他就在乡下。

David: This is the sticks. So how did the Kamprad family come to Småland? Well, if you’re perceptive and know your northern and central European family names, you might say Kamprad is not a Swedish name. It’s German. Actually, do you know what IKEA’s largest market is still to this day? It is not Sweden, it’s not the US, it’s not China.
大卫：这是棍子。坎普拉德家族是怎么来到斯莫兰的？如果你有洞察力，了解北欧和中欧的姓氏，你可能会说坎普拉德不是瑞典姓氏。它是德国姓氏。事实上，你知道宜家最大的市场是哪里吗？不是瑞典，不是美国，也不是中国。

Ben: Germany?
本：德国？

David: It’s Germany. Ingvar’s grandmother and grandfather had immigrated there to Småland from Germany only 30 years before Ingvar was born, so in 1896. Unfortunately, it’s not a happy story. They bought the farm—Älmtaryd Sight Unseen—when they were in Germany from an advertisement in a local hunting magazine. People would joke later that this was IKEA’s first mail order purchase was the farm and moving to Sweden.
大卫：是德国。英格瓦的祖母和祖父是在英格瓦出生前 30 年，也就是 1896 年从德国移民到斯莫兰的。不幸的是，这并不是一个幸福的故事。他们在德国时，通过当地一本狩猎杂志上的广告买下了这个农场--Älmtaryd Sight Unseen。后来人们开玩笑说，这是宜家第一次邮购农场和搬到瑞典。

Ben: So wait. Why would you buy a Sight Unseen farm in Sweden?
本：等等。你为什么要在瑞典买一个 "看不见的农场"？

David: Especially a not very attractive place to farm in Sweden.
戴维：尤其是在瑞典一个不太吸引人的地方耕种。

Ben: This is pre-World War I Germany, too.
本：这也是第一次世界大战前的德国。

David: Yes, so more to the story here. The stated purpose and idea was that they were going to convert the farm from an agricultural farm into a timber farm, into a timber forest. Ingvar’s grandfather, Achim, had been connected to the timber trade in Germany, so idea makes sense on paper.
大卫：是的，这里还有更多的故事。当时的目的和想法是，他们要把农场从农业农场改造成木材农场，变成一片木材森林。英格瓦的祖父阿希姆（Achim）曾在德国从事木材贸易，所以这个想法在纸面上是合理的。

Unfortunately though, it doesn’t work out. The next year after they immigrate in 1897, Ingvar’s grandfather Achim, commits suicide. That leaves his grandmother, Franzisca, alone to raise three kids (one of which was just born), and manage this farm. She knows nothing about how to farm. It’s a really difficult farm to operate in a rural isolated part of a country that she’s not from, doesn’t speak the language.
但不幸的是，他们并没有成功。1897 年，英格瓦的祖父阿希姆（Achim）在移民后的第二年自杀身亡。他的祖母弗兰兹斯卡（Franzisca）独自一人抚养三个孩子（其中一个刚出生）和管理农场。她对如何耕种一无所知。在一个与世隔绝的农村地区，要经营好这个农场真的很困难，因为她不是这个国家的人，也不会说当地的语言。

Ben: Totally rough.
本：太粗糙了。

David: Really, really rough.
大卫：真的，真的很粗糙。

Ben: I don’t know if this came up in the stuff you were reading. Something I read alluded to the idea that Ingvar’s grandfather committed suicide basically out of poverty. His life was so miserable from being totally impoverished, that he was clinically depressed.
本：我不知道你读的那些书里有没有提到这一点。我读到的一些文章提到，英格瓦的祖父基本上是因为贫穷而自杀的。他的生活因为一贫如洗而十分悲惨，以至于患上了临床抑郁症。

David: Well, yes. There’s a little more to the story. Turns out the actual reason for the family’s immigration from Germany was more about Franzisca and Achim’s marriage, and Franzisca’s family. Achim had been from a noble family in Germany, or at least a family with historically ties to the nobility. Franzisca was a commoner and (I think) an illegitimate child born out of wedlock.
大卫：嗯，是的。故事还不止这些。原来，他们一家从德国移民的真正原因是弗朗西斯卡和阿希姆的婚姻，以及弗朗西斯卡的家庭。阿希姆出身于德国的一个贵族家庭，或者至少是一个历史上与贵族有联系的家庭。弗兰兹斯卡是个平民，而且（我认为）是个非婚生子女。

Achim’s parents, in particular his mother, was not happy about this, didn’t approve of the marriage. Part of, or really probably the whole reason for their immigration from Germany to Sweden was to escape this. This is tough.
阿希姆的父母，尤其是他的母亲，对此并不满意，不同意这门婚事。他们从德国移民到瑞典的部分原因，或者说全部原因就是为了逃避这一切。这很艰难。

Ben: So to plant a seed here, there is a strong cultural thing in this family of don’t be poor. Figure out a way to earn a keep, make wealth, deeply ingrained from this.
本：所以在这里种下一颗种子，在这个家庭里有一种强烈的文化，那就是不要贫穷。想方设法赚钱养家，创造财富，这一点根深蒂固。

David: Yes. Really, really bad situation. Nonetheless, the family perseveres, and by the time these children grow up, Franzisca has turned Älmtaryd into a real functional farm. They’re getting by. It’s not going to make them rich, which again, nobody in Småland is rich. They’re making it work and they’ve built themselves into a respected family in the area.
大卫：是的。情况真的非常糟糕。尽管如此，这个家庭还是坚持了下来，等到这些孩子长大成人，弗兰兹斯卡已经把阿姆塔里德变成了一个真正实用的农场。他们过上了好日子。这不会让他们致富，因为在斯莫兰没有人致富。他们正在努力工作，并将自己打造成当地受人尊敬的家庭。

Now the eldest of these children, the eldest son, Frans Feodor grows up and marries the daughter of the biggest merchant in Älmhult, so bringing now some merchant blood into the family.
现在，这些孩子中的长子弗兰斯-费奥多尔长大成人，娶了阿姆胡尔特最大商人的女儿，为家族注入了一些商人血统。

When he’s 25, Franzisca asked him (and I don’t think she asked) to come help manage the farm. Frans Feodor and his new wife Berta, they have two young sons, the elder of whom is Feodor Ingvar Kamprad, our protagonist here. They arrive at the farm and this is where Ingvar Kamprad, the founder, purveyor, janitor, soul embodiment of IKEA grows up. Really, we say this on a lot of episodes, but Ingvar is IKEA as we shall see. He is like Jensen and Mark Zuckerberg all in one.
在他 25 岁时，弗兰兹斯卡邀请他（我认为她没有邀请）来帮忙管理农场。弗朗斯-费奥多尔和他的新婚妻子贝尔塔育有两个年幼的儿子，大儿子就是我们这里的主人公费奥多尔-英格瓦-坎普拉德。他们来到农场，英格瓦-坎普拉德，宜家的创始人、供应商、看门人、灵魂化身，就在这里长大。真的，我们在很多剧集里都说过，英格瓦就是宜家，我们会看到的。他就像是詹森和马克-扎克伯格的合体。

Ben: Singular founder. The company wouldn’t exist but for his exact personality magnified and multiplied into this huge behemoth. You already see the frugality that we’re about to get to the cleverness of being a merchant.
本：独一无二的创始人。如果不是他的人格魅力被放大、倍增成这个庞然大物，公司也不会存在。你已经看到了他的节俭，我们即将看到他作为商人的聪明才智。

David: The adversity, the chip on his shoulder, all of it.
大卫：逆境、他肩上的筹码，所有这一切。

Ben: Yup.
本：是的。

David: So when Ingvar is super young, like five years old, this merchant side of his DNA starts to come through and blossom. His aunt, the youngest child, the third child of Franzisca, helps young Ingvar buy bulk sets of matchboxes, mail order, from Stockholm, the capital of Sweden.
大卫：所以在英格瓦五岁的时候，他的商人基因就开始萌芽并开花结果了。他的姨妈，也就是弗朗西斯卡最小的孩子，第三个孩子，帮助小英格瓦从瑞典首都斯德哥尔摩邮购大宗火柴盒。

Little Ingvar, 5-year-old, then goes around the countryside selling individual matchboxes to other farms and other families in the area at a 3x markup from what he got them unit price in the bulk package from Stockholm.
然后，5 岁的小英格瓦就到乡下向当地的其他农场和家庭出售单个火柴盒，价格是他从斯德哥尔摩买来的散装火柴盒单价的 3 倍。

He writes later, “My aunt didn’t accept payment for the postage. Then I sold the boxes at two to three,” each order is like a penny to a krona at the time in Sweden, “cents each, sometimes even five. The whole mail order package of 100 cost 88 cents. Talk about profit margins. I still remember the lovely feeling from that time selling things became somewhat of an obsession for me.”
他后来写道："我姑妈不收邮费。然后我就以两到三美元一盒的价格出售，"在当时的瑞典，每份订单的价格相当于一美分兑一克朗，"每盒一美分，有时甚至是五美分。整套邮购 100 册的成本是 88 美分。这就是利润率。我至今还记得那时候可爱的感觉，卖东西成了我的一种痴迷"。

Ben: The seeds are sewn of one of the greatest retailers of all time right here at age five.
本：有史以来最伟大的零售商之一在五岁时就在这里播下了种子。

David: Totally. Sam Walton, Jim Sinegal, Sol Price, Jeff Bezos, Ingvar Kamprad.
大卫：完全正确。Sam Walton、Jim Sinegal、Sol Price、Jeff Bezos、Ingvar Kamprad。

Ben: Absolutely.
本：当然。

David: Young Ingvar gets a taste of this. He’s hooked. He goes on. All throughout his childhood, he’s ordering bulk items, mail order from elsewhere in the country, selling all kinds of stuff out to the residents in Småland and the countryside. Christmas cards, wall decorations, garden seeds, random small goods.
年轻的英格瓦尝到了甜头。他上瘾了他继续说在他的整个童年时期，他都在订购大宗商品，从国内其他地方邮购，向斯莫兰和乡下的居民出售各种东西。圣诞贺卡、墙壁装饰品、花园种子、各种小商品。

Ultimately, he finds a niche and a good business importing and selling fountain pens from other countries in Europe. He’s 10–12 years old at this point. He’s selling these fountain pens so fast that he decides like, oh hey, I wish I had some financing to be able to buy some more of these pens. I know I could make money.
最终，他找到了从欧洲其他国家进口和销售钢笔的利基和好生意。此时，他已经 10-12 岁了。他的钢笔卖得非常快，于是他决定，哦，嘿，我希望我有一些资金，能够再买一些这样的钢笔。我知道我可以赚钱。

Ben: I have product/market fit. I should raise money.
本：我有产品/市场契合点。我应该筹集资金。

David: I should raise money. So he goes to the village in Älmhult, and he takes out a 500 krona loan from the bank there, Swedish krona. This is like $63 about at the time. This is in 1938.
我应该筹钱。于是他去了阿姆胡尔特村，从那里的银行贷了500克朗，瑞典克朗。这在当时相当于63美元。那是在1938年。

Ben: And in 1938 dollars, $63 is hundreds of dollars today.
本：以 1938 年的美元计算，63 美元相当于今天的数百美元。

David: Especially for a 12-year-old.
尤其是对一个 12 岁的孩子来说。

Ben: Imagine your kid walking down the street and going and somehow going back with $500.
本：想象一下，你的孩子走在街上，不知怎么就带着 500 美元回去了。

David: That’s also part of this story here. He finagles. I don’t think his grandmother or his parents were helping him with this. So he uses that to import 500 fountain pens from Paris. Then I think they sell quickly. He repays back the the loan pretty quickly. That listeners is the only capital that ever goes into IKEA. That is the only money that Ingvar would ever raise.
大卫：这也是故事的一部分。He finagles.我想他的祖母或父母都没有帮他。他用这笔钱从巴黎进口了 500 支钢笔。我想这些钢笔很快就卖出去了他很快就还清了贷款那些听众是宜家唯一的资金来源那是英格瓦唯一能筹到的钱

Ben: We will flash all the way forward to modern day. Ingvar always owned 100% of IKEA. He built it into the world’s largest furniture store and one of the world’s largest retailers, period, without anybody else owning a single share of the company. No outside financing, no debt financing, nothing.
本：我们将一路闪到现代。英格瓦一直拥有宜家100%的股份。他把宜家打造成了世界上最大的家具店，也是世界上最大的零售商之一。没有外部融资，没有债务融资，什么都没有。

David: Nothing. They own (I think) all of their real estate today, they own all this. I’m sure they probably use construction financing today, but they have €25 billion in the bank. This is it. This is the background. This is what he comes from. 500 krona loan in 1938, paid back immediately. Only capital that ever goes into the business. Freaking wild.
大卫：没有。他们现在拥有（我认为）所有的房地产，拥有所有这些。我相信他们今天可能会使用建筑融资，但他们在银行里有 250 亿欧元。就是这样。这就是背景。这就是他的出身。1938年借了500克朗，马上就还了这是他唯一的投资太疯狂了

Ben: Totally crazy.
本：完全疯了。

David: Totally wild. I don’t recall exactly the Walmart story, but even that I think Sam was from family and banks and other folks taking money.
大卫：太疯狂了。我不记得沃尔玛的具体故事了，但我认为山姆也是从家人、银行和其他人那里拿的钱。

Ben: His wife’s family I believe invested.
本：我相信是他妻子的家人投资的。

David: That’s right. His wife’s family.
大卫：没错。他妻子的家人

Ben: The whole thing gets financed off of cashflow from pens.
本：全部资金都来自笔的现金流。

David: He literally trades matchboxes to Christmas cards, to pens, to furniture, to IKEA.
大卫：他用火柴盒交换圣诞贺卡、钢笔、家具和宜家家居。

Ben: Nuts.
本：坚果。

David: It’s like the story of the guy who starts with a paperclip and ends up with not just a house but a city.
大卫：这就像一个人从一枚回形针开始，最后不仅拥有了一栋房子，还拥有了一座城市的故事。

Ben: It’s not, though. It’s not really trading. He generates positive cash flow off of the sale of each of those items, then reinvests that positive cash flow in buying the inventory for the next thing. It’s just this, thank God he’s had 81 years to do it. Otherwise, you could never grow to something this large financing your future growth only on the cash flows you’ve generated so far.
本：但不是。这不是真正意义上的交易。他从每件商品的销售中产生正现金流，然后将正现金流再投资于购买下一件商品的库存。只是，感谢上帝，他有 81 年的时间来做这件事。否则，你永远不可能发展到这么大的规模，你的未来发展只能依靠你目前产生的现金流。

David: It’s a good point. Although he is a trader for a very long time, I think that is how he would think of himself. It’s not like he’s getting the better of other folks. He’s creating value. He’s creating value for suppliers. He is creating value for buyers. He’s performing capitalism here.
大卫：说得好。虽然他做交易员的时间很长，但我认为他就是这样看待自己的。他并没有比其他人做得更好。他在创造价值。他在为供应商创造价值。他在为买家创造价值。他在这里演绎的是资本主义。

Ben: That’s just the definition of capitalism. You sell something, you have excess cash flows in the form of profit margin. You reinvest that in growing your business. And he just did that over and over and over again.
本：这就是资本主义的定义。你卖出一些东西，你就会以利润率的形式获得超额现金流。你将其再投资于业务增长。他就是这样做的，一次又一次。

David: Okay. In 1943, when Ingvar is 17, he’s about to go off to the equivalent of college at the School of Commerce in Gothenburg, which is a much bigger city in Sweden. It’s actually a city in Sweden. Ingvar decides that before he goes, he wants to officially start a company, a firm to formalize all of his trading activities that he’s been doing, because he intends to expand it while he’s in Gothenburg at school. His import export business shall we say.
1943年，英瓦尔17岁，他即将去哥德堡的商学院上大学，哥德堡是瑞典一个更大的城市。哥德堡实际上是瑞典的一个城市。英格瓦决定，在去哥德堡之前，他要正式成立一家公司，将他一直从事的贸易活动正规化，因为他打算在哥德堡上学期间扩大业务。可以说是他的进出口业务。

Ben: And there is one other thing happening during this period of time in Ingvar’s life. We will come back to that later.
本：在这段时间里，英格瓦的生活中还发生了一件事。我们稍后再谈。

David: So before he leaves, he registers an official trading firm with the county of Småland, and names it very creatively, the natural thing that comes to mind, very descriptive term. He names it his name and his mailing address. Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd (Älmtaryd) Agunnaryd. I-K-E-A. IKEA.
大卫：因此，在离开之前，他在斯莫兰郡注册了一家正式的贸易公司，并给它起了一个非常有创意的名字，自然而然地想到了一个非常有描述性的词。他给公司起了自己的名字和通信地址。英格瓦-坎普拉德 Elmtaryd (Älmtaryd) Agunnaryd。I-K-E-A。宜家。

Ben: I never put together it was his mailing address. I always knew it was the two initials of his name and the farm and the city.
本：我从来没把这当成他的邮寄地址。我只知道这是他名字的两个首字母，还有农场和城市。

David: Well I think that was his mailing address.
大卫：我想那是他的邮寄地址。

Ben: That makes sense.
本：有道理。

David: This is the countryside here. It’s not like there’s any more to the address than like Älmtaryd Agunnaryd. He doesn’t have a house number.
大卫：这里是乡村。除了Älmtaryd Agunnaryd这个地址，也没有别的了。他没有门牌号。

Ben: So cool.
本：太酷了。

David: So that’s IKEA, that’s Ingvar Kamprad’s trading firm. This is it.
大卫：这就是宜家，英格瓦-坎普拉德的贸易公司。就是这里

Ben: And he does put the first IKEA logo sign on a little shed on the property. It’s simultaneously labeling the property by address, then in addition to saying this is where IKEA does business.
本：他确实把第一个宜家标志放在了房子的一个小棚子上。除了标明宜家家居在此经营外，还同时标明了地址。

David: Which is all part of the lore. I’m not sure how much actually happens in the shed besides he puts the sign up there.
大卫：这都是传说的一部分。我不确定除了他把标牌挂在那里之外，棚屋里到底发生了多少事。

Ben: I think he just stores inventory there.
本：我想他只是在那里储存存货。

David: Well let’s talk about inventory. Ingvar goes off to the School of Commerce, and for the first time there he’s able to do what (I think) he intended, which was get access in the school library to real actual trade publications, import-export trade papers and trade publications. He starts writing to the suppliers all over Europe who are listed in these trade publications and asks if he can become a selling agent of theirs in Sweden.
大卫：我们来谈谈库存。英格瓦去了商学院，在那里他第一次实现了（我想）自己的愿望，那就是在学校图书馆查阅真正的贸易出版物、进出口贸易文件和贸易出版物。他开始给这些贸易出版物上刊登的欧洲供应商写信，询问自己能否成为他们在瑞典的销售代理。

Now I say agent. At this point, he’s running an actually incredibly capital-light business. Most things I think he is not taking inventory. Some of it he is. He’s storing some pens and stuff, small goods under his bed while he is at college. But a lot of it, what he’s doing is he’s finding and aggregating demand in Sweden and sending purchase orders directly to the manufacturers wherever they are in Sweden or elsewhere, and they just fulfill the orders directly to the customers by mail. It’s pretty awesome.
现在我说的是经纪人。在这一点上，他经营的实际上是一个难以置信的轻资本生意。我认为他没有盘点大部分东西。有些东西他还在盘点。他在上大学的时候，会在床底下存一些笔之类的小东西。但很多时候，他所做的是在瑞典寻找和汇总需求，然后直接向瑞典或其他地方的制造商发送采购订单，制造商则直接通过邮寄向客户履行订单。这真是太棒了。

Ben: The first drop shipper.
本：第一家代发货商。

David: Yeah, he’s not doing the shipping. He’s just an aggregator for demand. He’s an agent.
大卫：是的，他不负责运输。他只是需求的聚合者。他是一个代理商。

Ben: And he never takes possession of the inventory. It’s fulfilled in real time as he gets the order. The supplier puts it in the mail. It’s great.
本：他从不占有库存。当他收到订单时，就会实时履行。供应商把货寄过来。这很好。

David: And again, not always. Sometimes, he gets a box of 500 pens or whatever. He’s doing whatever is going to make him the most money and be the right arrangement, but being an agent is the best way to do this.
大卫：再说一遍，并不总是这样。有时，他会得到一盒 500 支笔或其他什么东西。只要能让他赚到最多的钱，只要是正确的安排，他都会去做，但做经纪人是最好的方式。

He starts off, naturally he continues the pen business. He goes from fountain pens to ball points. That’s a big hit. Then he gets into wallets, cigarette lighters, file folders, all sorts of small goods.
他一开始自然是继续做笔的生意。他从钢笔转向圆珠笔。这是一个大热门。然后，他又涉足钱包、打火机、文件夹等各种小商品。

At first, he’s mostly just doing what a lot of other people are doing at this point in time who are trader-agent types. He’s a traveling salesman. He is going back and forth to Gothenburg and to Småland, and he’s selling to customers that he meets mostly out in the countryside. It’s hand-to-hand combat, it’s ringing doors, it’s calling on his network.
起初，他主要是在做此时此刻很多其他人都在做的贸易商--代理人类型的工作。他是一个旅行推销员。他往返于哥德堡和斯莫兰之间，向他在乡下遇到的客户推销产品。他要手把手地教，他要挨家挨户地敲门，他要利用自己的关系网。

Then, though, he gets the idea. He’s like, well I’m getting all my supplier relationships through trade magazines and corresponding by mail. Then a lot of times when I’m the agent, they’re fulfilling the orders by mail. What if I just get into the mail order business myself? These trade publications are a pretty good way to get business for the suppliers. What if I do that?
后来，他有了这个想法。他说，我通过贸易杂志和邮件与供应商建立了联系。很多时候，当我是代理商时，他们都是通过邮购来完成订单的。如果我自己做邮购业务呢？这些贸易出版物是为供应商拉生意的好方法。如果我这样做呢？

So he starts a product catalog and he advertises it in publications all around Sweden, with the idea being that, oh, rather than just what I’m limited to doing myself, I can now scale across the whole country. I can aggregate a lot more demand. It actually doesn’t matter if I don’t know these people or I don’t go to these parts of Sweden. The suppliers don’t know them either. It’s all going to work the same.
于是，他开始编制产品目录，并在瑞典各地的出版物上做广告，他的想法是，哦，我现在可以在全国范围内扩大规模，而不仅仅局限于我自己做的事情。我可以聚合更多的需求。实际上，如果我不认识这些人，或者我不去瑞典的这些地方，也没有关系。供应商也不认识他们。一切都一样。

He’s also learned at this point that if he can aggregate more and more demand and get higher order volumes, he’s for sure going to get better prices from these suppliers.
他现在也明白了，如果他能聚合越来越多的需求，获得更高的订单量，他肯定能从这些供应商那里获得更好的价格。

Now here in the, call it mid-1940s, this is not a new innovation that young Ingvar is coming up with. It’s basically the story of the Sears Roebuck catalog, 50 years earlier in America. This is happening all over the world and there are plenty of other people doing the same thing in Sweden at the time.
现在是 20 世纪 40 年代中期，年轻的英格瓦并没有什么创新。这基本上是 50 年前美国西尔斯-罗巴克目录的故事。这种事情在全世界都在发生 当时在瑞典也有很多人在做同样的事情

Ben: Once you had enough scale to say, hey, I’ve aggregated a bunch of interesting products, you’ve started making a catalog, you mailed out to everyone, and that was your client base.
本：一旦你有了足够的规模，你就可以说，嘿，我已经聚集了一堆有趣的产品，你已经开始制作目录，你邮寄给每个人，这就是你的客户群。

David: It was the e-commerce industry before the e-commerce industry. Anybody could do it. It was just about aggregating demand.
大卫：这是电子商务行业之前的电子商务行业。谁都可以做。这只是为了聚合需求。

Ingvar creates a catalog of his wares called IKEA News. Eventually, he publishes IKEA News on its own with its own subscriber base, but at first he’s just inserting it as an advertising supplement in local farming publications all around Sweden.
英格瓦制作了一份名为《宜家新闻》的商品目录。最终，他独立出版了《宜家新闻》，并拥有了自己的订户群，但起初他只是将其作为广告副刊插入瑞典各地的地方农业出版物中。

By the end of college, end of the war, like I said, he’s doing really well. He’s doing way better than probably anybody back in Småland. After school, he returns to the farm, to Älmtaryd, and he recruits his family to also start helping him with the business, fulfilling these orders, running all the mail and all that stuff. They’re still just running it on the farm.
大学毕业时，战争结束了，就像我说的，他做得非常好。在斯莫兰，他可能比任何人都做得好。放学后，他回到了农场，回到了阿姆塔里德 他招募了他的家人，开始帮他打理生意，完成这些订单，处理所有邮件和其他事情他们仍然只是在农场里经营。

Then in 1948, Ingvar makes a fateful, but again not unique, decision. He decides to add furniture to his catalog. Now, other competitors of his, other rural-focused mail order businesses dealers offered furniture at the time, and that’s actually why Ingvar starts doing it too.
1948 年，英格瓦做出了一个命运攸关的决定，但同样并非独一无二。他决定在目录中添加家具。当时，他的其他竞争对手、其他以农村为重点的邮购业务经销商也提供家具，这实际上也是英格瓦开始做家具的原因。

He had been shopping the competition, doing the Sam Walton thing, reading all the advertising supplements of all his competitors, and he notices that they start offering furniture. It seems to be working for them. They’re promoting it more and more. He says, well hey, I should try that too. He would joke later it was an accident that he found his life’s calling in the furniture business.
他一直在考察竞争对手，像山姆-沃尔顿那样，阅读所有竞争对手的广告增刊，他注意到竞争对手开始提供家具。这似乎对他们很有效。他们宣传得越来越多。他说，嘿，我也应该试试。他后来开玩笑说，他在家具生意中找到了自己的人生使命，这是一个意外。

So he does with furniture what he’s doing with all IKEA products at this time, which is he goes around, sources some suppliers, and he asks them if IKEA can be their agent to sell their furniture.
因此，他在家具方面所做的工作与目前他在所有宜家产品方面所做的工作一样，那就是他四处奔走，寻找一些供应商，并询问他们宜家是否可以成为他们的代理，销售他们的家具。

Now, furniture isn’t exactly like fountain pens or wallets. It’s big. You can’t just order a box of 500 armchairs and stuff it under your bed or put it in your little shed on the farm. Really, what you need to run this model is you need local suppliers or at least domestic suppliers within Sweden.
现在，家具与钢笔或钱包不同。它很大。你不可能订购一箱 500 把扶手椅，然后把它塞到你的床底下，或者放在你农场的小棚子里。实际上，经营这种模式需要的是本地供应商，或者至少是瑞典国内的供应商。

Well, fortunately as we discussed, Småland is full of timber. And it just so happens that probably because of that, there are a number of furniture makers right there in the province.
幸运的是，正如我们讨论过的，斯莫兰盛产木材。正因为如此，该省有许多家具制造商。

Ingvar goes around to local Småland furniture makers and asks if he can be their agent. Like hey, can I bring you more business? And they’re all like, well sure. He’s like, there’s one condition which is you’ll have to deliver the furniture yourselves. Is that okay? And they’re like, well that’s what we do anyway. It’s part of our business. Sure, yeah.
英格瓦四处拜访斯莫兰当地的家具制造商，询问是否可以成为他们的代理商。比如，嘿，我能给你们带来更多生意吗？他们都说，当然可以。他就说，但有一个条件，那就是你们必须自己运送家具。可以吗？他们就说，反正我们就是干这个的。这是我们业务的一部分当然可以

Now famously—this is part of the lore about Ingvar and probably is somewhat exaggerated—he loved to tell people that he’s dyslexic. It totally serves this lore of, oh, here’s this hardscrabble country retailer. I don’t know how dyslexic he really was.
他喜欢告诉人们他有阅读障碍。他喜欢告诉人们他有阅读障碍，这完全是为了迎合人们对这个艰苦朴素的乡村零售商的传说。我不知道他到底有多大的阅读障碍。

Ben: Really? This was a thing that I almost thought I was going to stump you because it comes up later in a key moment of IKEA, that he’s dyslexic and it’s why some—I don’t want to spoil it yet—obviously not only do you know he was dyslexic, you’re proposing he may not have been that dyslexic?
本：真的吗？这是我差点以为要难倒你的地方，因为后来在宜家家居的关键时刻出现了，他有阅读障碍，这就是为什么有些--我还不想剧透--很明显，你不仅知道他有阅读障碍，你还提出他可能没那么有阅读障碍？

David: Well, I read some stuff from some former employees that suggested that it was more part of the legend that he cultivated than reality. But I actually don’t know what you’re referring to. I’m excited to be surprised.
戴维：嗯，我从一些前雇员那里读到过一些东西，他们认为这与其说是现实，不如说是他创造的传奇的一部分。但实际上我不知道你指的是什么。我很高兴能大吃一惊。

Ben: So it’s why the products are named the way they are, rather than having model numbers.
本：所以这就是为什么产品要这样命名，而不是使用型号。

David: Oh, this is exactly what I was going to say here.
大卫：哦，这正是我想说的。

Ben: Okay. It’s like part of the, hey, I need to have a word for each of these things and not only—
好吧，这就像是 "嘿，我需要为每件事情准备一个词，而不仅仅是--"的一部分。

David: Oh, yeah. This is exactly what I was about to say. I thought that was like, oh, is there another point later?
大卫：哦，是的。这正是我要说的。我还以为是，哦，后面还有吗？

Ben: No. Okay, so where are we going here, David?
好吧，我们要去哪里，大卫？

David: Well, regardless of its veracity or not, Ingvar does not like remembering product numbers and codes and catalog. He decides that he’s going to give a name and not a product code or number to all these furniture pieces. Yes, this is the beginning of IKEA product naming conventions.
大卫：不管是否属实，英格瓦不喜欢记住产品编号、代码和目录。他决定给所有这些家具起一个名字，而不是产品代码或编号。没错，这就是宜家产品命名规则的开端。

Do you know, though—I actually had no idea until I started researching—what these general naming conventions are within IKEA today?
不过，在我开始研究之前，你知道宜家现在有哪些通用的命名规则吗？

Ben: I think so. I think different product categories are named after different things, like rivers, and certain furniture is named almost like conference room naming at companies.
本：我想是的。我认为，不同的产品类别会以不同的事物命名，比如河流，某些家具的命名与公司会议室的命名差不多。

David: Yes. Products are usually named after Scandinavian locations. I think Swedish locations are used for sofas and coffee tables, like the core part of the line. Norwegian locations (I think) are used for beds, Danish locations for textiles. Then some of the smaller goods like lamps are season lakes. Outdoor furniture is islands, I think.
大卫：是的。产品通常以斯堪的纳维亚的地点命名。我认为瑞典产地的产品用于沙发和茶几，就像产品线的核心部分。挪威的地点（我想）用于床，丹麦的地点用于纺织品。灯具等小件商品则是季节性湖泊。户外家具则是岛屿。

Ben: Clever.
本：聪明。

David: We got the whole schema here with names. Ingvar, if he truly was dyslexic, would now be having a tough time with all of this.
戴维：我们这里有整个名称图式。英格瓦，如果他真的有阅读障碍，他现在一定会很难理解这些。

Anyway, Ingvar decides that he’s going to start all this off with his named pieces of furniture in the IKEA catalog that again are not his furniture. He’s just sourcing them from local furniture makers like other people are doing. He’s going to start with a test, and he puts three pieces from Småland in the catalog, two armchairs, one of which is an armless armchair (I guess just a chair) that is intended for baby nursing.
总之，英格瓦决定从他在宜家产品目录上命名的家具开始，这些家具也不是他的家具。他只是像其他人一样，从当地的家具制造商那里采购这些家具。他打算先做个试验，在目录中刊登了三件来自斯莫兰的家具，两把扶手椅，其中一把是无扶手扶手椅（我猜就是椅子），是给婴儿哺乳用的。

Ben: Dude, an armless chair for baby nursing? Sounds awful. It sounds like torture, like that’s the time where you need the arm the most.
本：伙计，给婴儿喂奶用的无扶手椅？听起来太可怕了。听起来像是折磨，就好像那是你最需要扶手的时候。

David: Hey man. Different era. He writes, “The response was unambiguous. We sold a huge amount of this ‘test’ furniture.” And Ingvar, of course, he’s a trader, he has a nose for business. He’s like, great, what more can we add?
嘿，伙计。时代不同了。他写道："反应是明确的。我们卖出了大量这种'测试'家具"英格瓦，当然，他是个商人，他对生意有敏锐的嗅觉。他想，很好，我们还能增加什么呢？

So he quickly sources a sofa bed to add to the catalog. Famous IKEA sofa bed, there it is right in the beginning. Then a chandelier, and then all sorts of other stuff. It’s off to the races. Pretty much any piece of furniture or furniture-like home goods that he can get his hands on and advertise in the catalog, it sells like hotcakes. Or maybe meatballs. Is that too much? That’s too much.
于是，他很快就找到了一张沙发床，加入到产品目录中。著名的宜家沙发床，一开始就有。接着是一盏吊灯，然后是各种各样的其他东西。一切就绪。几乎所有他能拿到手的家具或类似家具的家居用品，只要在目录上做了广告，就会热卖。或者是肉丸是不是太多了？太夸张了

Anyway, now why is it selling like meatballs here? Why is there a huge demand? Before mail order, the only way that people out in the countryside could get furniture that wasn’t locally made right there or passed down from generations but still it had to get made and bought at some point in time, was through dealers like Ingvar used to be like, traveling salesmen–type people.
不管怎么说，现在为什么它在这里卖得像肉丸一样好？为什么会有如此大的需求量？在邮购之前，乡下人要想买到当地制造或世代相传的家具，只能通过像英格瓦那样的经销商，即旅行推销员来购买。

And they had very limited access to inventory. They were sourcing individual pieces, probably more often than not, second-hand estate stuff or maybe they’re from a distributor or a third-party middleman. Either way, we’re talking super limited scale, very sparse and unreliable product offerings, like you need a baby nursing chair? An armless baby nurse, whatever you need, a dining table, the likelihood that your guy had that in his stock was low.
他们获得库存的途径非常有限。他们采购的都是单件产品，可能更多的是二手货，也可能是经销商或第三方中间商提供的。无论哪种方式，我们说的都是超级有限的规模、非常稀少且不可靠的产品，比如你需要婴儿护理椅？无臂婴儿护理椅，不管你需要什么，一张餐桌，你的人有存货的可能性都很低。

That’s just availability. But then also the pricing. Again, we’re talking about how everybody here is just basically eking out a living. The traveling salesman agent types are trying to eke out a living, too. They’re trying to make as much money as they can. They’re not trying to build scale. They don’t get, oh hey, volume drives prices down, low prices drive volume. No, no, no.
这只是供应情况。还有价格。再说一遍，我们说的是这里的每个人基本上都在勉强维持生计。旅行推销员也在努力谋生。他们想尽可能多地赚钱。他们并不想扩大规模。他们不明白，哦，嘿嘿，销量推动价格下降，低价推动销量。不，不，不

Ben: No. It’s, what’s the maximum margin I can extract for this very one-off random special sale I’m making?
本：不，是我做的这个一次性随机特价销售的最大利润率是多少？

David: Totally. Ingvar, though, because of his history in small goods and as an importer, has got a very different mindset. He knows that oh, selling goods in bulk orders—it’s all the way back to the matchboxes—that’s how he’s approaching the problem.
大卫：完全正确。不过，由于英格瓦曾经营过小商品，又是进口商，他的思维方式与众不同。他知道，哦，批量销售商品--这可以追溯到火柴盒--这就是他解决问题的方法。

He’s also young. He doesn’t have a family. He can just operate in a very different mindset than everyone else here. Scale doesn’t bother him. He’s happy to try and drive prices down as low as possible, pass that savings along to buyers, undercut everyone else, and get more demand. This is how he operates.
他还年轻。他没有家庭。他的思维方式与这里的其他人截然不同。规模不会困扰他。他乐于把价格压得越低越好，把省下来的钱转给买家，压低别人的价格，获得更多的需求。这就是他的经营之道。

Even more than that, he realizes furniture is way better than these small goods. Because even though I could sell cheaper, these are still large ticket purchases for people. The absolute number of dollars or krona that I’m going to make on any given piece of furniture, even if I’m selling it at a low margin, is way more than ballpoint pens here.
不仅如此，他还意识到家具比这些小商品要好得多。因为即使我可以卖得更便宜，但对人们来说，这些仍然是大件商品。我从任何一件家具上赚到的美元或克朗的绝对数量，即使我卖得很便宜，也比这里的圆珠笔多得多。

And not only that, but it’s also selling quickly even though these are high-priced items, because there’s this huge unmet demand in the countryside. People are starving for this stuff. Even better, the logistics and distribution for us for IKEA is just as easy as ever. The furniture makers are handling it all themselves. This is great. Let’s pour resources into this.
不仅如此，尽管这些都是高价商品，但销售速度也很快，因为农村有大量的需求没有得到满足。人们渴望得到这些东西。更好的是，我们为宜家提供的物流和配送服务一如既往地简单。家具制造商自己就能搞定一切。这太好了让我们投入更多资源吧

Ben: It is crazy. He managed to aggregate demand for something that is very difficult to manage and take inventory of. He managed to sell to those customers without having to deal with the really tough inventory problems. Truly is the first drop shipper.
本：这太疯狂了。他设法聚合了一些很难管理和盘存的需求。他成功地将产品卖给了这些客户，而无需处理非常棘手的库存问题。他确实是第一位代发货人。

David: Well as we’ll see, it works for a while, and then it doesn’t. But for the moment in time, the furniture makers love it. Ingvar and the other folks who are doing this have just expanded their market. This is the golden early days for this whole catalog drop shipping industry.
戴维：我们会看到，它一会儿有效，一会儿无效。但就目前而言，家具制造商很喜欢。英格瓦和其他做这个生意的人刚刚扩大了他们的市场。对于整个目录直销行业来说，现在正是黄金时期。

Within a couple of months, Ingvar is getting so many orders from customers and so many furniture makers who want to be in the catalog, that he’s like, okay, we got to just focus on furniture. He starts hiring a handful more of other folks beyond just his family to help out. But it’s still a fairly lean operation. We’re talking 10 people or so through the 1940s, they’re still running it out of the farm at Älmtaryd.
没过几个月，英格瓦就收到了很多客户的订单，还有很多家具制造商想把他们的产品列入目录，于是他想，好吧，我们就专注于家具吧。于是，他开始雇佣一些家人以外的人来帮忙。但这仍然是一个相当精简的运作。到了20世纪40年代，只有10个人左右，他们仍然在阿姆塔里德的农场里经营。

Then in 1949, Ingvar decides to go really big. He starts buying regularly every week a supplement in the big national farmer’s paper in Sweden, which has a circulation of 285,000 copies. I guess we should have talked about this earlier. I’m talking about supplements, advertising. I’m realizing that I bet a lot of our audience has no idea what I’m talking about.
1949 年，英格瓦决定大干一场。他开始每周定期购买瑞典发行量达 28.5 万份的全国性大型农民报纸的副刊。我想我们应该早点讨论这个问题。我说的是副刊和广告。我意识到，我敢打赌，很多观众都不知道我在说什么。

Ben: A supplement to a newspaper.
本：报纸的副刊。

David: Yes. This is here in America going back to the Best Buy circular in the Sunday paper or the Target circular or the Sears circular.
大卫：是的。在美国，这可以追溯到周日报纸上的百思买（Best Buy）通函、塔吉特（Target）通函或西尔斯（Sears）通函。

Ben: I don’t get a newspaper anymore, but I’m pretty sure this still happens. I think this is still a very common advertising channel.
本：我现在不看报纸了，但我肯定这种情况还会发生。我认为这仍然是一个非常普遍的广告渠道。

David: Totally. Anyway, back to 1949, Ingvar goes big. He commits to regular weekly publication as a supplement in the national farmer’s paper.
大卫：完全正确。总之，回到 1949 年，英格瓦开始大干一场。他承诺每周定期在全国农民报上发表副刊。

Ben: So before this, when we said people were subscribed to his catalog, how did that work?
本：那么在此之前，当我们说人们订阅了他的目录，那是怎么做到的？

David: It worked like all these businesses I think did at the time, which was if you were a customer, you saw something in this advertisement circular in a paper or somehow got exposed to it, you then place an order, you then get placed on the customer list. I think once Ingvar’s got your address and knows who you are, you’re in his CRM so to speak. Now I think you’re getting his catalog directly.
大卫：我想当时所有这些企业都是这样运作的，如果你是客户，你在报纸的广告通告上看到了什么，或者以某种方式接触到了什么，然后你下了订单，你就会被列入客户名单。我认为，一旦英格瓦得到了你的地址，知道了你是谁，你就进入了他的客户关系管理（CRM）。现在，我想你会直接收到他的目录。

So in this first weekly supplement, he specifically appeals to what he ultimately terms this idea of the many. We’ll keep coming back to this. This is super critical to IKEA.
因此，在这第一份每周增刊中，他特别呼吁他最终称之为 "众人 "的理念。我们会继续讨论这个问题。这对宜家来说至关重要。

In this first national circular that goes out, he writes, “You may have noticed that it is not easy to make ends meet. Why is this? You yourself produce goods of various kinds—milk, grain, potatoes, et cetera—and I suppose you do not receive too much payment for them. No, I’m sure you don’t, and yet everything is so fantastically expensive, to a great extent that is due to middlemen.
他在发出的第一份全国通告中写道："你们可能已经注意到，维持生计并不容易。这是为什么呢？你们自己生产各种商品--牛奶、谷物、马铃薯等等--我想你们并没有得到太多的报酬。不，我肯定你没有，但所有东西都贵得离谱，这在很大程度上是中间商造成的。

Compare what you receive for a kilo of pork with what the shops ask for it. In several areas, it is unfortunately true that goods that may cost one krona or two krona to manufacture, costs five krona, six krona, or more to buy. In this price list, we have taken a step in the right direction by offering you goods at the same price your dealer buys for, in some cases lower.”
比较一下一公斤猪肉的价格和商店的要价。遗憾的是，在一些地区，生产成本为 1 克朗或 2 克朗的商品，购买时却要花 5 克朗、6 克朗或更多。在这份价目表中，我们已经朝着正确的方向迈出了一步，我们为您提供的商品价格与您的经销商购买的价格相同，有些甚至更低"。

Ben: This is it. We’ll make it up in volume. This is the thinnest margins possible for the many people with an obsession in cutting out middlemen.
本：就这样吧。我们会用数量来弥补。对于那些执着于剔除中间环节的人来说，这已经是最薄的利润了。

David: What’s interesting here is I think this is the first time where he’s by instinct appealing specifically to the low price aspect. Again, almost everybody else was appealing to the selection, the availability of, oh you can finally get furniture. He’s now saying, no, no, I know it’s hard for you out there. I know you’re struggling to make ends meet. I’m going to give you the absolute lowest prices on this stuff.
戴维：有趣的是，我认为这是他第一次本能地特别呼吁低价。同样，几乎所有人都在呼吁选择，呼吁 "哦，你终于可以买到家具了"。他现在说，不，不，我知道你们在外面很辛苦。我知道你们生活艰难。我会给你绝对最低的价格。

Ben: Oh yeah. This is worth a pause. Harken back to our Walmart episode. What’s the perfect triangle of delivering a retail product? It’s convenience, price, and selection. What he’s basically saying is price, price, price.
本：哦，是的。这值得暂停一下。请回想一下沃尔玛的那一集。提供零售产品的完美三角是什么？是便利、价格和选择。他说的基本上就是价格、价格、价格。

David: Yes, and way better selection than you had in the old model. Convenience, probably not as good, but price, I know you care about price. You are struggling to make ends meet.
戴维：是的，而且比旧版本有更好的选择。便利性可能没那么好，但价格，我知道你在乎价格。你现在入不敷出。

A little later, we’re going to talk about this amazing document that Ingvar writes in 1976 called The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. He’s so folksy. But the very beginning of it, the very first thing reads that the mission of the company is to create a better everyday life for the many people—the many—by offering a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.
稍后，我们将讨论英格瓦在 1976 年写下的这篇令人惊叹的文献，名为《一个家具商的遗嘱》。他写得很有乡土气息。但在文件的开头，第一句话就写道：公司的使命是为更多的人创造更美好的日常生活--通过提供种类繁多、设计精良、功能齐全的家居产品，以低廉的价格让尽可能多的人都能买得起。

Ben: That’s it. It’s all right there in that sentence.
本：就是这样。就在那句话里。

David: Yup. Now, the interesting question though here and for the rest of the episode is like we said, Ingvar is not the only mail order furniture company at this point. He has plenty of competitors who are doing the same things and probably catching onto this same idea that low prices are also important. But none of them become IKEA. The next reason why none of them become IKEA is none of them have a showroom.
大卫：是的。现在，有趣的问题是，就像我们说的，英格瓦并不是唯一一家邮购家具公司。他有很多竞争对手，他们也在做同样的事情，而且可能也在接受同样的理念，即低价也很重要。但他们都没有成为宜家。他们都没有成为宜家的另一个原因是他们都没有展厅。

Ben: Oh yes.
本：哦，是的。

David: But before we tell the showroom chapter of IKEA, now is a great time to tell you about our presenting partner this season. J.P. Morgan Payments. We’ve been talking about how IKEA brought simplicity to a complex and fragmented customer experience. This is exactly what J.P. Morgan is doing for payments.
大卫：不过，在我们讲述宜家展厅篇章之前，现在是向大家介绍我们本季合作伙伴的大好时机。摩根大通支付公司。我们一直在谈论宜家是如何将复杂而分散的客户体验简单化的。这正是摩根大通在支付领域所做的工作。

Businesses don’t want complexity or to have to rely on connecting multiple third-party hardware and software vendors together, or to sacrifice stability and security in order to grow their top line. This is why J.P. Morgan invests over $17 billion a year in technology as the end-to-end seamless payment solution to handle everything from payment acceptance and processing to security to reconciliation, so you can focus on running your business.
企业不希望业务复杂，或不得不依赖将多个第三方硬件和软件供应商连接在一起，或牺牲稳定性和安全性以提高利润。这就是为什么摩根大通每年投资超过170亿美元用于技术，作为端到端的无缝支付解决方案，处理从支付接受和处理、安全到对账的所有事务，从而使您能够专注于业务运营。

Ben: Exactly. Since we’re in IKEA land, let’s zoom in today on retailers, and specifically on a product that most of you are very, very familiar with—tap-to-pay.
本：没错。既然我们来到了宜家，今天就让我们把目光投向零售商，特别是你们大多数人都非常熟悉的一种产品--"即点即付"（Tap-to-Pay）。

Obviously, there’s been a massive shift in the last few years in how consumers expect to seamlessly use their phones to check out. Well, J.P. Morgan payments enables this as part of their omnichannel solution that’s likely been running under the hood in many of the in-person checkout experiences that you’ve had. We’ve reached this tipping point where 50% of global in-person transactions are now contactless, and it’s totally essential for companies to offer a great tap-to-pay experience.
很明显，在过去的几年里，消费者对无缝使用手机结账的期望发生了巨大的变化。J.P.摩根支付公司将此作为其全渠道解决方案的一部分，该解决方案很可能已在您的许多现场结账体验中得到应用。我们已经达到了这样一个临界点：现在全球 50% 的现场交易都是非接触式的，因此企业必须提供出色的 "点对点 "支付体验。

David: I honestly love this and I’ve been preaching the virtues of tap-to-pay for years now.
大卫：老实说，我很喜欢这一点，多年来我一直在宣扬自来水付费的优点。

Ben: Listeners, I can vouch for that. David was a very early adopter. When we would go on morning runs—I think actually back when you lived in Seattle—you’d only bring your watch even when we were going to go get breakfast together afterwards. I thought this is crazy.
本：听众朋友们，我可以证明这一点。戴维很早就开始使用手表了。我们晨跑的时候，我想其实早在你住在西雅图的时候，你就只带手表了，即使我们之后要一起去吃早餐。我觉得这太疯狂了。

David: Yes, it’s great. It’s great for everyone. For merchants, they can easily accept debit and credit cards from the NFC-enabled digital wallets on smartphones. For employees, it’s great because they can seamlessly complete payments from anywhere in the store. Of course, for customers like us, it’s great since they get a transparent and secure transaction and pay more conveniently.
大卫：是的，这很好。这对每个人都很好。对于商家来说，他们可以通过智能手机上的 NFC 数字钱包轻松接受借记卡和信用卡。对员工来说，这也很好，因为他们可以在店内任何地方无缝完成支付。当然，对于像我们这样的顾客来说，这也是件好事，因为他们可以获得透明、安全的交易，而且支付更加方便。

For anyone who is at our Chase Center show, this is the exact experience we used for the roaming hawkers selling the hats. You got to experience this firsthand, and the results were pretty insane. We found out after that they sold 1500 hats in under two hours with a 100% success rate, which means zero declines.
对于参加过我们大通中心展会的人来说，这正是我们为流动售卖帽子的小贩们提供的体验。你们可以亲身体验一下，效果非常惊人。事后我们发现，他们在不到两个小时的时间里卖出了 1500 顶帽子，成功率达到 100%，这意味着零退货。

Ben: Any business, retail or otherwise, benefits from having a frictionless payment experience. Listeners can go to jpmorgan.com/acquired and learn more about tap-to-pay, and check out other payment solutions driving growth for businesses. Our thanks to J.P. Morgan Payments.
本：任何企业，无论是零售业还是其他行业，都能从无摩擦支付体验中获益。听众可以访问jpmorgan.com/acquired，了解更多关于 "即点即付 "的信息，并查看其他推动企业增长的支付解决方案。感谢摩根大通支付公司。

Okay, so David, how does the first IKEA showroom come to be?
好吧，那么大卫，第一家宜家展厅是如何诞生的？

David: As we alluded to earlier, in the early days of this mail order furniture catalog circular–type business model, it’s the golden era. Everybody prospers. Consumers are happy, furniture makers are happy. There’s room for competition. It’s all greenfield. Everybody’s going after new customers. Nobody’s stepping on each other’s turf. Inevitably though, as we get into the early 1950s, competition gets more intense among these mail order businesses like IKEA, and price wars start.
大卫：正如我们之前提到的，在这种邮购家具目录循环型商业模式的早期，这是一个黄金时代。每个人都兴旺发达。消费者高兴，家具制造商也高兴。有竞争的空间。都是绿地。每个人都在争取新客户。谁也不踩谁的地盘。但不可避免的是，进入20世纪50年代初，像宜家这样的邮购企业之间的竞争越来越激烈，价格战也开始了。

This is the next chapter. The thing about mail order was yes, it enabled scale, which enabled selection, which enabled low prices, but there was no governor on quality. What I mean by that is that anybody who had a mail order business could take attractive-looking photos of their furniture and home goods, stick it in their catalog or their circular advertisements, and say oh, buy my beautiful-looking furniture at this really, really attractive price. Those photos may or may not have any bearing on the reality of what the furniture actually was when it arrived.
这是下一章。邮购的特点是，它有规模，有选择，价格低廉，但质量没有保证。我的意思是说，任何从事邮购业务的人都可以为他们的家具和家居用品拍一些看起来很吸引人的照片，贴在他们的商品目录或循环广告上，然后说，哦，用这个非常非常吸引人的价格买我的漂亮家具吧。这些照片可能与家具到货时的实际情况有关，也可能无关。

Ben: Not to mention, you basically had no recourse because at this point there weren’t modern credit cards. It’s not like you could charge back. There weren’t 2024-style returns infrastructure where you could just get your money back by sending something back weeks or months after it was delivered to you and get a full refund. Nobody was building these big, global brands that were trustworthy. It was just a matter of which small, local circular brand convinced you that their picture was worth ordering.
本：更不用说，你基本上没有追索权，因为此时还没有现代信用卡。你又不能退钱。也没有 2024 年式的退换货基础设施，你可以在东西送到你手上几周或几个月后再寄还给你，并获得全额退款。没有人在打造这些值得信赖的全球性大品牌。只是看哪个地方的小循环品牌能让你相信他们的图片值得订购。

David: I actually don’t know what their return policies are. I hope they’re good. But it’s like the Temu of 1950s Sweden here. The disconnect after a couple of years of this between what you think you’re getting and what you’re actually getting starts to widen.
大卫：事实上，我不知道他们的退货政策是什么。我希望他们的政策是好的。但这里就像上世纪 50 年代的瑞典特姆。这种情况持续几年后，你认为得到的东西和实际得到的东西之间的脱节开始扩大。

Ben: Even though Ingvar is focused on quality furniture at the lowest possible prices, the fact that other people aren’t is hurting him because it’s hurting consumer trust.
本：尽管英格瓦专注于以尽可能低的价格提供优质家具，但其他人并不专注于此，这对他造成了伤害，因为这损害了消费者的信任。

David: And I can just deliver low prices if I compromise on quality. So he’s searching for a way out of what’s starting to become a pretty brutal competitive landscape.
大卫：如果我在质量上打折扣，我就能提供低价。因此，他正在寻找一条出路，以摆脱开始变得相当残酷的竞争环境。

One night, as legend has it, he’s working late with one of his early employees, a guy named Sven Göte, and they come up with a crazy idea. The crazy idea is what if we had a showroom where people could come and they could touch, see, and feel the actual items that we are selling in our catalog, then they could convince themselves, yes, this is the quality, this is the item that I’m going to get at this price. I think if we could just show people they could see with their own eyes, touch with their own hands, they would see that the quality we’re delivering at this price is way better than anyone else out there.
传说有一天晚上，他和他的一位早期员工斯文-戈特（Sven Göte）一起工作到很晚，他们想出了一个疯狂的主意。这个疯狂的想法是，如果我们有一个陈列室，人们可以来到那里，摸一摸、看一看、摸一摸我们目录中销售的实际商品，这样他们就能说服自己，是的，这就是质量，这就是我要以这个价格买到的商品。我认为，如果我们能让人们亲眼看到、亲手摸到，他们就会明白，我们以这个价格提供的质量比其他任何人都要好。

And it just so happens at this moment in time that the local furniture joinery in Älmhult is about to close. He is going to buy the building for 13,000 krona which is about $2500 at the time we’re here in early 1950s. So not cheap, but not that much money. That $2500 investment becomes the first IKEA showroom. We seriously kid you not listeners. The only money this guy ever raised was that 500 krona bank loan.
而此时此刻，阿姆胡尔特当地的一家家具细木工厂即将倒闭。他将以13000克朗的价格买下这栋建筑，在我们来到这里的20世纪50年代初，这大约是2500美元。虽然不便宜，但也不是很多钱。这2500美元就成了第一间宜家展厅。各位听众，我们可没开玩笑。这家伙唯一筹到的钱就是那500克朗的银行贷款。

Ben: It’s nuts. The funny thing about this, it is a showroom. It’s not a store. Our business model continues to be this catalog thing, but we have a place where you can just touch and feel the furniture.
本：太疯狂了。有趣的是，这是一个陈列室。它不是一家商店。我们的商业模式仍然是目录式的，但我们有一个地方可以让你触摸和感受家具。

David: I think Tesla does this today or has done it for a while.
大卫：我认为特斯拉现在就在这样做，或者说已经做了一段时间了。

Ben: Or Bonobos.
本：或者 Bonobos。

David: Yeah. There’s a store in a mall that you can go see the cars or see the pants, but you can’t take it home. Let’s illustrate why this is a completely nutty idea. (a) There’s the obvious. You can’t take it home. (b) The whole point of the mail order business was that buyers and sellers can now access each other across the whole country. All of Sweden as a market, all the rural areas everywhere in the country. Sweden is a pretty big geographical country.
大卫：是的。商场里有一家商店，你可以去看车或看裤子，但不能带回家。让我们来说明为什么这是一个完全疯狂的想法。(a) 显而易见。你不能把它带回家。(b) 邮购业务的全部意义在于，现在买卖双方可以在全国范围内相互联系。整个瑞典都是一个市场，全国各地的所有农村地区都是一个市场。瑞典是一个地理面积相当大的国家。

What Ingvar is doing here, they’re opening a showroom in one singular remote part of this country, in a town with 1000 people who live there. Their business model is to sell to the other towns of 1000 people all over the rest of the country. Why on earth would opening one showroom in one little town work?
英格瓦在这里所做的，就是在这个国家的一个偏远地区，在一个有 1000 人居住的小镇上，开设一个陈列室。他们的商业模式是将产品销往全国其他有 1000 人居住的小镇。在一个小镇上开一个展厅到底有什么用呢？

Here’s the thing. By God does it work? I don’t know that the customer base in the town of Älmhult was that important to IKEA itself. People come from all over the country to go to the showroom. This is wild.
事情是这样的。它真的有用吗？我不知道Älmhult镇的顾客群对宜家本身有多重要。人们从全国各地赶来宜家展厅。太疯狂了

Ingvar advertises that they’re opening this for months leading up to the actual opening, which is in March of 1953. All of his customers and everybody getting the circular advertisements in the weekly paper all across the country, they’re hearing about this showroom in Älmhult on opening day in March of 1953. There are over 1000 people from all over the country who show up and wait in line to get in. Take the train, they somehow make their way to Älmhult to see the furniture. They’re not even buying anything. It’s crazy.
英格瓦在 1953 年 3 月实际开业前的几个月里一直在做开业广告。他的所有客户，以及全国各地收到周报循环广告的所有人，都听说了这家位于阿姆胡尔特的陈列室将于 1953 年 3 月开业。来自全国各地的 1000 多人来到这里排队等候入场。他们坐火车，不知不觉地来到艾姆胡尔特看家具。他们甚至什么都不买。太疯狂了

Ingvar and the team, they’re so worried about this that they don’t know that the floorboards on the second floor of this old joinery—it’s an old building here—are going to stand up to 1000 people being up there, plus all the furniture that they have as the showroom. They had also advertised in the circulars that they were going to offer free coffee and morning buns to anybody coming to shop.
英格瓦和他的团队对此忧心忡忡，他们不知道这栋旧木工房（这是一栋老建筑）二楼的地板是否能承受 1000 人在上面的活动，再加上作为展厅的所有家具。他们还在通函上打广告说，他们将为任何前来购物的人提供免费咖啡和早面包。

Ben: The very first time there’s food at an IKEA is the very first time there’s an IKEA.
Ben：宜家第一次出现食物，就是宜家第一次出现食物。

David: That’s right. There has always, always been part of the concept. But yet Ben, as you say, like there’s no warehouse, there’s no flat-pack furniture. Everybody’s just there to see the stuff. And you could also fill out an order form while you’re there to then buy it by mail later.
戴维：没错。这个概念一直都有。但本，正如你所说，这里没有仓库，没有平板家具。每个人都只是在那里看东西。你还可以在那里填写订单，然后邮寄购买。

Ben: Ingvar has a quote about this. “At that moment, the basis of the modern IKEA concept was created. And in principle it still applies. First and foremost, use a catalog to tempt people to come to an exhibition, which today is our store. Come and see us in Älmhult and convince yourself.”
本：关于这一点，英格瓦有一句名言。"在那一刻，现代宜家概念的基础诞生了。原则上它仍然适用。首先，利用目录吸引人们来参观展览，这就是我们今天的商场。来阿姆胡尔特看看我们吧，你自己会信服的"。

He wrote on the back of the first catalog, two very important words there. Convince. The other one is exhibition. Already they were seeing this idea and the fact that he marketed to the whole country and offered food. We’re not just offering you a store that you can walk into and buy something. We are creating an exhibition.
他在第一本目录的背面写了两个非常重要的词。说服。另一个是展览。他们已经看到了这个想法，看到了他面向全国销售并提供食品的事实。我们不只是为你提供一家商店，让你走进去买东西。我们正在创建一个展览。

David: Yes, it is an experience. It’s almost like you’re getting a free ticket to this experience, this exhibition.
大卫：是的，这是一种体验。就好像你得到了一张免费入场券，可以免费参观这次展览。

Ben: Great retailers have more in common with P.T. Barnum than poor retailers.
本：与差劲的零售商相比，伟大的零售商与 P.T. Barnum 的共同点更多。

David: Totally. Oh my God. I think and Ingvar thinks and he writes this, “This is the very first time anywhere in the world that a mail order business is combined with a physical showroom.”
大卫：完全正确。我的天啊我想，英格瓦也这么想，他写道："这是世界上首次将邮购业务与实体展厅相结合。"

You might think, oh, Sears in the US. Obviously, yeah. That’s a mail order business. And they have Sears stores. No, no, no. They’re different. The Sears stores, you buy the stuff at the stores and you walk out. It’s not a showroom.
你可能会想，哦，美国的西尔斯百货公司。很明显，是的。那是邮购业务。他们还有西尔斯百货商店不，不，不。它们是不同的。西尔斯百货商店，你在店里买了东西 就可以走出去。不是陈列室

Here with IKEA for the first time, it is that concept you just described, Ben. It’s like we tempt you to come see this exhibition that then you order by mail. I don’t think anybody had ever done this before because again, it was a crazy freaking idea.
本，这就是你刚才描述的宜家的概念。就像我们邀请你来看展览，然后你通过邮件订购。我觉得以前没人这么做过，因为这又是一个疯狂的想法。

But of course it becomes an enormous success. Within the first couple of years of the Älmhult showroom store—it’s not a store being open—a huge portion of IKEA’s catalog subscriber base they’ve now formalized it as the IKEA catalog, about half of their catalog subscriber base which is hundreds of thousands of people now at this point in time, make the pilgrimage to Älmhult and they visit the showroom. This tiny little village, hundreds of thousands of people are now coming there.
当然，它取得了巨大的成功。在Älmhult陈列室开业后的头几年里--这不是一家商店--宜家目录订购者中的一大部分（他们现在已经正式将其命名为 "宜家目录"），大约一半的目录订购者（现在有数十万人）都到Älmhult朝圣，参观陈列室。这个小村庄现在有数十万人前来参观。

Ben: And you might ask yourself, what’s the big deal with the catalog? Why are people so interested in getting a catalog? It was really inspirational. It hadn’t quite made the shift yet, but especially in the 60s after Brita Lang took over from Ingvar, because Ingvar is everything right now. He’s art directing the photography. I think he might even be taking the pictures and writing the copy.
本：你可能会问自己，目录有什么大不了的？为什么人们对目录这么感兴趣？这真的很有启发性。当时还没有完全转变过来，尤其是在 60 年代布丽塔-兰接替英格瓦之后，因为英格瓦现在就是一切。他是摄影的艺术指导我想他甚至还负责拍照和撰写文案

But it turned into this thing with these vibrant, beautiful living room settings, and people are anticipating the arrival of the IKEA catalog. It positioned IKEA as this brand, this lifestyle. It illustrated a life you could be living if you participated in the IKEA story.
但后来，它变成了一种充满活力、美轮美奂的客厅布置，人们期待着宜家产品目录的到来。它将宜家定位为一个品牌，一种生活方式。它展示了如果你参与宜家的故事，你就能过上的生活。

David: That really, really becomes a thing in the 60s with modernity and when the target customer becomes the urban and suburban customer. But here, even with the rural customer, it still works. They lean into this model heavily.
戴维：在 60 年代，随着现代化的发展，当目标客户变成城市和郊区客户时，这一点就变得非常重要了。但在这里，即使是农村顾客，这种模式依然有效。他们非常倚重这种模式。

They arrange for any IKEA customer to get discount tickets on Swedish railways to make the pilgrimage to Älmhult. Then they also set up this program where customers who come from another location and commit to furnishing a whole house—they call these the setting up house customers—they get free dinner at the hotel in Älmhult that night. This is hokey stuff, but to your point, P.T. Barnum. That’s what this is.
他们为任何宜家家居的顾客提供瑞典铁路的折扣票，让他们前往阿姆胡尔特朝圣。此外，他们还制定了一项计划，凡是从其他地方赶来并承诺装修一整栋房子的顾客--他们称这些顾客为 "装修房子的顾客"--当晚都可以在阿姆胡尔特的酒店享用免费晚餐。这是个老掉牙的东西，但就像你说的，P.T. 巴纳姆。就是这样

Within a year, they pass one million krona in sales at this showroom, which has got to be by multiples the largest business ever built in Älmhult in human history. In 1954, the next year after this has been open, they passed three million krona in sales. I think the exchange rate was about 5:1 at this point in time of five krona to $1.
一年之内，这个陈列室的销售额就突破了 100 万克朗，成为阿姆胡尔特有史以来最大的企业。1954 年，也就是开业后的第二年，销售额突破了 300 万克朗。我想当时的汇率大约是 5：1，5 克朗兑 1 美元。

1955, they double again to six million krona in sales. The number of IKEA catalog subscribers around the country passes half a million. All this is done with still less than 30 employees, the business still being run out of the combination of the family farm and this one showroom. It’s wild the scale they get to.
1955年，销售额再次翻番，达到600万克朗。全国各地的宜家目录订户超过了50万。所有这一切，都是在不到30名员工的情况下完成的，业务仍由家庭农场和这间陈列室共同经营。宜家的规模之大令人难以置信。

Ben: It’s amazing. It’s one of these things that on the one hand we are, how many years into IKEA? Was founded in 1943 and we’re approximately in 1953–1954 here, we’re 10–11 years in. But the thing that is really working is this thing that just got started the previous year, which is the combo of the catalog and the showroom. That proves to be this amazing winning combination that they just realize, oh my God, we need to scale this.
本：太神奇了。一方面，我们进入宜家已经多少年了？宜家成立于 1943 年，我们现在大约是 1953-1954 年，已经有 10-11 年了。但真正起作用的是前一年刚刚开始的目录和展厅的组合。事实证明，这是一个惊人的成功组合，他们意识到，天哪，我们需要扩大规模。

David: Totally. This is, I would say, generation three of the IKEA business. Generation one is just small goods trading company.
大卫：完全正确。我可以说，这是宜家业务的第三代。第一代只是小商品贸易公司。

Ben: Matches and pens.
本：火柴和笔。

David: Generation two is furniture plus catalog. Now we’re here in version three of furniture catalog plus showroom, and that’s what’s really explosive. But here in the 50s, though, the target customer base—we referenced this a minute ago—and the product mix is still geared towards these rural farmland families, like hey, I’m outfitting my farmhouse.
大卫：第二代是家具加目录。现在是第三代，家具目录加展厅，这才是真正的爆炸性增长。但在 50 年代，目标客户群--我们一分钟前提到过--产品组合仍然面向农村家庭，比如，我正在装修我的农舍。

Ben: Yup, and when you look at the old catalogs, you can tell. It’s not this simple Swedish design that we think about as IKEA as today. It’s pretty rugged, robust, heavy furniture.
Ben：是的，当你看旧目录时，你就会知道。它不是我们今天认为的宜家那种简单的瑞典设计。它是非常坚固、结实、沉重的家具。

David: Yes. When the 1960s come around Sweden, like pretty much all of Europe, starts rapidly and inexorably urbanizing. The automobile becomes commonplace, farms are closing down, young people are moving into cities and suburbs. They’re taking jobs in factories, they’re taking white collar jobs, other blue collar jobs.
大卫：是的。20 世纪 60 年代，瑞典和几乎所有欧洲国家一样，开始了快速而不可阻挡的城市化进程。汽车普及，农场倒闭，年轻人搬进城市和郊区。他们在工厂工作，从事白领和其他蓝领工作。

I think there was some stat in the IKEA story that during the decade between the mid-50s and the mid-60s, three-quarters of the farms in Sweden closed down. It’s wild. But this is happening all over Europe.
我想宜家家居的故事里有过这样的统计：在 50 年代中期到 60 年代中期的十年间，瑞典有四分之三的农场倒闭了。这太疯狂了。但这种情况在整个欧洲都在发生。

The customer base for IKEA and all their competitors starts to majorly, majorly shift. It’s no longer families setting up their farms or taking over the farm from the elder generations. It’s now a whole new lifestyle of modernity in the cities, in the suburbs, smaller houses, modern houses, electricity, apartments.
宜家及其所有竞争对手的客户群开始发生重大转变。不再是家庭建立自己的农场或从老一辈手中接管农场。现在，城市、郊区、小型住宅、现代化住宅、电力、公寓等都是全新的现代化生活方式。

Ben: Not to mention it’s impossible to do the traditional thing of just passing down the furniture to the next generation, which is how most people got their furniture up until this point because they were living very close to their parents or perhaps taking over the house from their parents.
本：更不用说不可能像传统那样把家具传给下一代了，在此之前，大多数人都是这样得到家具的，因为他们和父母住得很近，或者从父母手中接过了房子。

David: Totally.
大卫：完全正确。

Ben: This is, oh, I’m getting an apartment in Stockholm. I need to start from scratch. The furniture needs to be pretty easy to move or put together.
本：哦，我要在斯德哥尔摩买一套公寓。我需要从头开始。家具必须易于移动或组装。

David: Yes, indeed it does. On the one hand, this is a total existential threat to IKEA’s business. It’s like, well your customer base is shifting. The products that you are selling are no longer wanted. They’re going away.
大卫：是的，确实如此。一方面，这对宜家的业务来说是一个不折不扣的生存威胁。这就好比，你的顾客群正在发生变化。你销售的产品不再受欢迎。它们正在消失。

On the other hand, there has never been a bigger opportunity in the history of furniture making and selling throughout all of human history than what is about to happen here. IKEA, even though it’s currently serving what is effectively the parent generation of these new customers, with a little bit of adaptation, has the perfect model for these new, young, urban, and suburban families.
另一方面，在整个人类家具制造和销售史上，从来没有像现在这样的大好机会。尽管宜家目前的服务对象实际上是这些新顾客的父辈，但只要稍加调整，宜家就能为这些新的、年轻的城市和郊区家庭提供完美的服务模式。

But to get there—Ben, I know you’re itching to tell this story—there’s one more element of the IKEA model that needs to fall into place. Ironically, even though it is a totally identified core part of the company today, it’s a reaction to competition that drives it. That is designing its own furniture and specifically flat-packing.
本，我知道你已经迫不及待地想讲这个故事了，但要达到这个目标，宜家模式中还有一个要素需要落实到位。具有讽刺意味的是，尽管它是宜家今天完全确定的核心部分，但它却是对竞争的一种反应。那就是设计自己的家具，特别是平板包装。

Ben: It is astonishing that so far in the story, they’ve been shipping full-sized, fully assembled armchairs in order to get them to your house.
本：令人吃惊的是，故事进行到现在，他们一直在运送全尺寸、完全组装好的扶手椅，以便把它们送到你家。

David: Well, remember IKEA’s not shipping it. The suppliers are shipping it,
大卫：记住，宜家家居不发货。是供应商在发货、

Ben: But it’s taking up a huge amount. Think about a flat-packed chair that you’re ordering versus a fully assembled chair and how much room that takes up in the truck.
本：但占用的空间很大。想想你订购的一把平放的椅子和一把完全组装好的椅子相比，在卡车上要占用多少空间。

David: Yup. In the early days, this doesn’t really matter to IKEA. Hey, it’s all great. That’s my supplier’s problem. As the business is scaling, though, this becomes IKEA’s problem because it’s a limit to scaling.
大卫：是的。在早期，这对宜家来说并不重要。嘿，一切都很好。这是我的供应商的问题。但随着业务规模的扩大，这就成了宜家的问题，因为这是规模扩大的一个限制。

Ben: Okay. Where does flat-packing come from?
本：好的。平板包装从何而来？

David: It’s totally intertwined with IKEA taking on the furniture design itself. I said it was driven by competition. It’s not driven by competition because any of the other players do the same thing. It’s actually the opposite problem.
戴维：这与宜家承担家具设计本身的工作是密不可分的。我说过这是由竞争驱动的。这不是因为竞争，因为任何其他参与者都在做同样的事情。实际上，问题恰恰相反。

IKEA has become so dominant in Sweden at this point in time that it’s monopolizing a huge portion of all the furniture makers production output. The rest of the industry starts organizing against IKEA.
此时的宜家已经在瑞典占据了主导地位，垄断了所有家具制造商的大部分产量。家具行业的其他企业开始组织起来反对宜家。

Ben: And IKEA is philosophically trying to drive down prices. They want to create the furniture for the many. Their competitors are all trying to maximize margin and have small businesses because the whole furniture landscape, in fact to this day, is very, very fragmented. It’s tons of players serving niche local use cases.
本：宜家的理念是努力降低价格。他们希望为更多的人创造家具。他们的竞争对手都在努力实现利润最大化，而且都是小企业，因为整个家具行业，实际上到今天为止，都非常非常分散。有数不清的企业为当地的小众产品提供服务。

You’ve got the whole Swedish furniture industry that’s pissed at IKEA for going to the furniture manufacturers and saying, what’s the very best deal you can give me? And then turning around to customers and saying, I’m going to make very little margin and sell you all of this manufacturer’s capacity at extremely low cost.
整个瑞典家具业都对宜家恼火不已，因为宜家找家具制造商说："你们能给我什么最好的条件？然后再转过头来对顾客说，我要赚取极少的利润，以极低的成本把这家制造商的所有产能都卖给你。

The competitors are feeling it from both sides. They’re saying, okay, the manufacturers have no capacity to manufacture for me and no customers want my stuff because you’re selling it cheaper.
竞争对手从两方面都感受到了这一点。他们说，好吧，制造商没有能力为我生产，没有客户想要我的产品，因为你卖得更便宜。

David: It’s freaking wild. IKEA does not have a direct competitor today in 2024. There is not a single other globally-scaled furniture business in the world.
大卫：太疯狂了。在 2024 年的今天，宜家没有直接的竞争对手。世界上没有任何一家全球规模的家具企业。

Ben: Put a pin in it. I have a thesis on why.
本：把针插进去。我有一篇论文要说明原因。

David: Ooh, okay. So what do the competitors do? They start locking IKEA out of trade fairs, trying to limit their access to suppliers. They start pressuring IKEA’s existing suppliers into not selling to IKEA. They say, oh, we’re all collectively going to boycott other orders from you.
大卫：哦，好的。那么竞争对手会怎么做呢？他们开始把宜家排除在展销会之外，试图限制宜家与供应商的接触。他们开始向宜家现有的供应商施压，迫使他们不卖给宜家。他们说，哦，我们要集体抵制你们的其他订单。

Ben: And IKEA’s not yet big enough where that fails. That actually works, and the manufacturers just come to IKEA and say, sorry, the collective leverage of all your competitors is too large and we’re not going to serve you.
本：宜家的规模还不够大，这一点还没有失效。这实际上是行得通的，生产商会对宜家说，对不起，你们所有竞争对手的集体影响力太大了，我们不会为你们服务。

David: Competitors even go to the Swedish government and they lobby the Swedish government to limit IKEA’s ability to circulate its catalog. I don’t know on what grounds.
大卫：竞争者甚至会去瑞典政府，游说瑞典政府限制宜家的目录流通。我不知道理由是什么。

Ben: This is like the most European thing ever that that regulation should…
本：这就像最欧洲的事情，该条例应...

David: This is too good for consumers.
大卫：这对消费者来说太好了。

Ben: Yes, exactly.
本：是的，没错。

David: Oh man. We could make a million jokes about European regulation. Anyway, to your point, it starts to work and this becomes a real problem for IKEA. Ingvar, the company, they’re like, all right. Well how are we going to design our way out of this one? Turns out design is the answer.
大卫：哦，天哪。我们可以开无数个关于欧洲法规的玩笑。总之，就你说的，它开始起作用了，这对宜家来说是个真正的问题。英格瓦，宜家公司，他们想，好吧。我们该如何设计出一条出路呢？设计就是答案

They start going to the suppliers, to the furniture makers, and they say, okay. We hear you that our competition does not want you to give your pieces to us you’re also giving to them. What if we give you a new set of designs for different furniture and you make those designs just for us? Separate line. Open up separate lines. Could you do that?
他们开始去找供应商和家具制造商，然后说，好吧。我们听到你说，我们的竞争对手不希望你把你的产品给我们，你也把产品给他们。如果我们给你们一套不同家具的新设计，而你们只为我们做这些设计呢？独立生产线。开辟单独的生产线。你们能这样做吗？

Most of them say, well yeah, I think I could do that. This is the beginning of IKEA in-house designed furniture. Now the first “designer” who Ingvar sets to work on this is a former advertising draftsman named Gillis Lundgren. Ingvar had hired him originally to help Ingvar do the set layout and the photo shoots for the catalog as his assistant.
大多数人都说，嗯，是的，我想我能做到。这就是宜家内部设计家具的开端。英格瓦安排的第一位 "设计师 "是前广告绘图员吉里斯-伦德格伦（Gillis Lundgren）。英格瓦最初雇用他作为助手，帮助英格瓦完成产品目录的布景和照片拍摄工作。

Lundgren starts cranking out sketches of furniture designs for the manufacturers. Then as legend has it, all this is going on, then one night, the two of them, Lundgren and Ingvar, are taking down the set from a photo shoot. Lundgren says, well, he’s putting a table away. He’s like, oh God. This thing is so heavy. What a huge amount of space it takes up. Let’s just take the legs off the table and put them under the tabletop and then we can store all this stuff better.
伦德格伦开始为制造商绘制家具设计草图。就像传说中的那样，这一切都在进行着，一天晚上，伦德格伦和英格瓦两人正在拆卸拍摄完的布景。朗格伦说，他在放桌子他说，天啊这东西太重了太占地方了。我们把桌腿拆下来，放在桌面下面 这样就能更好地存放这些东西了

Ingvar is like a bolt of lightning has hit him. He’s like, oh my God, I have just received the last commandment from God about how to run this business. It’s like, yes, we take the legs off and it takes up a lot less space. My God, we can design these things to come off on purpose. And then when we have our manufacturers ship the tables to customers, they’re going to be able to fit a hell of a lot more of them in those trucks.
英格瓦就像被一道闪电击中。他想，天哪，我刚刚从上帝那里得到了关于如何经营这家公司的最后一条诫命。是的，我们可以把腿拿掉，这样占用的空间就小多了。天哪，我们可以故意把这些东西设计成脱落的。然后，当我们让制造商把桌子运给客户时，他们就能在卡车上装下更多的桌子了。

Ben: Yup, and it’s apocryphal. I am sure something along the lines of this insight happened. There were many other companies that were doing flat-pack furniture before this, including the company we’ve talked about multiple times on this episode, Sears Roebuck, was flat-packing their catalog distribution in America.
本：是的，而且是杜撰的。我确信有类似的事情发生过。在此之前，还有很多其他公司也在做平板包装家具，包括我们在本集节目中多次谈到的西尔斯-罗巴克公司，他们在美国的目录分销都是平板包装的。

But certainly the company that gets credit for popularizing and growing the volume of flat-pack furniture being shipped 100x, 1000x around the world is IKEA.
不过，宜家无疑是普及平板包装家具并将其运往世界各地的数量增加 100 倍、1000 倍的功臣。

David: And it’s a nice little story. But I think what IKEA does is they go all-in on this. The first flat-pack product that they design is the max table in the mid-1950s. But by the end of the 1950s, flat-pack and then self-assembly by the customer is expanded across the entire range, all of IKEA’s furniture. Obviously, some stuff you can’t flat-pack, but as much as possible. And because they had, for separate reasons, started doing their own designs with manufacturers, they can do this.
大卫：这是个不错的小故事。但我认为宜家所做的就是全力以赴。50 年代中期，他们设计的第一款平板包装产品是一张最大的桌子。但到了 20 世纪 50 年代末，宜家的所有家具都开始采用平板包装，然后由顾客自行组装。当然，有些东西是不能平放的，但还是尽可能多。而且，由于不同的原因，宜家开始与制造商合作进行自己的设计，因此他们可以做到这一点。

Ben: Flashing forward a little bit to today, it’s interesting to look at all the downstream things that happen from flat-packing. (1) It enables this space-saving in trucks. It enables you to do more volume for the same cost. (2) There’s a cost reduction since customers can do the labor and transport.
本：时间稍稍向前推移到今天，我们来看看平板包装所带来的下游效应。(1）节省了卡车空间。在成本相同的情况下，它能让你生产更多的产品。(2) 由于客户可以承担人工和运输工作，从而降低了成本。

Before, you had to have someone at your company put the chair together, and that costs a lot of labor. Now you’re putting that on the customer. You’re also making it so the customer has the capability to transport the merchandise in a way that they couldn’t before. They had to have a truck.
以前，你必须让公司的人把椅子组装起来，这需要花费大量的人力。现在，你把这个责任推给了客户。你还让客户有能力运输商品，这在以前是做不到的。他们必须有一辆卡车。

David: Mail order was the only way to make this happen. You’re not going to drive away or get on a bus with a table.
大卫：邮购是实现这一目标的唯一途径。你不可能开车离开，也不可能带着一张桌子坐上公共汽车。

Ben: Absolutely. There’s a further cost reduction since it decreases the broken merchandise in transit. There’s this third amazing benefit to flat-packing. Ultimately, they pass all this along to the customers, meaning now their products are definitely the least expensive on the market for their quality.
本：当然。这还能进一步降低成本，因为它能减少商品在运输过程中的破损。平板包装还有第三个惊人的好处。最终，他们会把所有这些好处都转嫁给客户，也就是说，现在他们的产品绝对是市场上价格最低、质量最好的。

And psychologically it gives this feeling of accomplishment. It increases your fondness for whatever object you assembled because of the labor, the blood, sweat and tears that you just put into it. You feel like I made this. We almost broke up, but we didn’t. And four hours later, I have the cabinet together.
在心理上，它能给人一种成就感。它能增加你对所组装物品的喜爱，因为你为之付出了劳动、血汗和泪水。你会觉得这是我做的我们差点分手，但我们没有。四个小时后，我把橱柜组装好了。

David: What are the articles I was reading for research? Called it the LEGO for Adults.
大卫：我读的研究文章是什么？我称之为 "成人乐高"。

Ben: That’s totally right.
本：完全正确。

David: Another great Scandinavian company. We’ll have to cover it someday.
大卫：又一家伟大的斯堪的纳维亚公司。有机会我们一定要报道一下。

Ben: I have a fun story for you, David, on flat-pack that I haven’t told you yet.
本：大卫，我有一个关于平板包装的有趣故事还没告诉你。

David: Ooh, light on me.
哦，照着我。

Ben: There’s another word for this. Do you know what it is? Do you hear it anywhere? It’s an old school retail merchant phrase.
本：这还有一个词。你知道是什么吗？你听过吗？这是一句老派零售商的话。

David: Ooh. No, I don’t think I did.
哦不，我想我没有。

Ben: Knock-down.
本：击倒。

David: Ooh, no.
大卫：哦，不。

Ben: And it was referred to as KD. In preparation for this episode, I talked to Jim Sinegal, who’s the co-founder of Costco, because I was asking about IKEA and the similarities. He said he used to love going to IKEA to look at the KD furniture that they stocked.
本：它被称为 KD。在准备这期节目的过程中，我和好市多的联合创始人吉姆-西内格尔（Jim Sinegal）聊了聊，因为我问到了宜家和 KD 的相似之处。他说，他以前很喜欢去宜家看看他们库存的 KD 家具。

I thought this was a brand. I was like, oh, maybe this was a brand that IKEA used to stock. At some point I realized in our call, oh no. This is what people used to call the flat-pack is KD furniture.
我以为这是一个品牌。我当时想，哦，也许这是宜家曾经进货的一个品牌。后来我在电话中意识到，哦，不。这就是人们常说的KD家具。

David: That’s amazing.
大卫：太神奇了。

Ben: The interwoven this with Costco is really interesting. Another research call was with Bjorn Bayley who ran IKEA in the US in the late 80s. He mentioned that Ingvar always looked up to Costco and thought they were the greatest retailer in the world. There’s a lot of shared admiration there.
本：这与好市多之间的交织非常有趣。另一个研究电话是与比约恩-贝利（Bjorn Bayley）打的，他在上世纪 80 年代末在美国经营宜家家居。他提到英格瓦一直很仰慕好市多，认为他们是世界上最伟大的零售商。这里有很多共同的钦佩。

David: We’re going to talk about hotdogs a little bit there. You think I’m joking. I’m not.
大卫：我们要在这里谈谈热狗。你以为我在开玩笑。我没开玩笑

Ben: All right, let’s go.
好了，我们走吧。

David: Before we get there, though, KD, this innovation, knock-down, flat-pack, this is also what enables this shift in the product mix for the new modern, young, urban, and suburban customer who doesn’t want the same furniture, can’t use the same furniture that their parents were using back on the farmlands.
戴维：不过，KD，在此之前，这种创新、拆卸式、平板式包装，也是促成产品组合转变的原因，因为现代、年轻、城市和郊区的新客户不想要同样的家具，不能使用他们父母在农田里使用的家具。

Legend has it that right around this time as the whole IKEA range is shifting to flat-pack, Ingvar goes on a trip to the Milan Furniture Show in Italy. While he’s there, one of the suppliers, a carpet supplier at the fair, offers to take him around the city. Ingvar wants to see how people live and he is like, sure. I’ll ask a bunch of my employees who work in my urban, modern, mechanized factory here in Milan, if we can just go into their homes.
据说，就在宜家的所有产品都转向平板包装的时候，英格瓦去了一趟意大利米兰家具展。在那里，一位供应商（展会上的地毯供应商）提议带他到城市里转转。英格瓦想看看人们是如何生活的，他说，当然可以。我想问问我在米兰的现代化机械工厂工作的员工，我们能不能去他们家里看看。

Ingvar goes into their apartments, and he’s just appalled by the furniture that he sees there and how different it is from the new, modern, city living designs he’s seeing at the furniture fair. It’s all the old, rural, farmhouse, big, heavy, dark furniture that takes up a lot of space and isn’t practical in the city.
英格瓦走进他们的公寓，看到里面的家具让他大吃一惊，这些家具与他在家具展上看到的新式、现代、城市生活设计大相径庭。这些家具都是老式的、乡村的、农家的、又大又重又黑的家具，占据了很大的空间，在城市里并不实用。

Supposedly, this is the moment when Ingvar really gets religion of like, oh, this is our new customer, and this is our opportunity to design the low price, high quality, affordable furniture for this target market. All these people that are moving to cities for the first time, this is modern middle class living.
据说，此时此刻，英格瓦才真正意识到，哦，这就是我们的新客户，这就是我们为这个目标市场设计低价、优质、实惠家具的机会。所有这些人都是第一次搬到城市，这就是现代中产阶级的生活。

Ben: We’re all familiar with the simple Scandinavian design that IKEA furniture is, and it’s become extremely popular. Basically universally adored.
本：我们都很熟悉宜家家具简约的北欧设计风格，它已经变得非常流行。基本上人人都喜欢。

David: I just accept it as the standard of what modern furniture is.
大卫：我只是接受它作为现代家具的标准。

Ben: The question is, is there something intrinsic to simple Scandinavian design that makes it universally applicable, or is it IKEA’s success that now we all look at it and have some reverence for it? It really is beneficial to IKEA that we all like simple designs instead of ornate designs at this point because it makes it work much better for flat-pack, for reducing cost, for making transportation easy.
本：问题是，简约的斯堪的纳维亚设计是否有其内在的东西使其普遍适用，或者是宜家的成功使我们现在都看着它，并对它有一些崇敬之情？在这一点上，我们都喜欢简单的设计而不是华丽的设计，这对宜家来说确实是有益的，因为这使宜家在平板包装、降低成本和方便运输方面的效果更好。

Imagine chunky, ornate furniture with intricate hand-carved designs still being the creme de la creme of what you should have in your house. It’s basic and expected. It makes the business model work, that it’s these simple designs.
想象一下，带有复杂手工雕刻图案的厚重华丽的家具仍然是家中必备的精品。这是基本的，也是人们所期待的。正是这些简单的设计，让这种商业模式行之有效。

David: I think these things are inextricable. I’m not an expert in design history and people who are might contradict me here, but I don’t think there was necessarily that much about Scandinavian or Swedish design that was particularly light, simple, minimal before IKEA.
大卫：我认为这些东西是密不可分的。我不是设计史方面的专家，专家们可能会反驳我，但我认为在宜家之前，斯堪的纳维亚或瑞典的设计并不一定有那么多特别轻盈、简单、极简的东西。

Ben: Listeners join us in the Slack. I’m curious if someone has traced the lineage of this Scandinavian aesthetic in a pre-1950s world where this comes from. Who are we all copying? Because there’s definitely some lineage of designers that all this is trying to emulate.
本：听众朋友们请加入我们的聊天室。我很好奇，是否有人追溯过这种斯堪的纳维亚美学在上世纪 50 年代前世界的源流。我们都在模仿谁？因为这一切肯定都有一些设计师在模仿。

David: Ingmar writes to this, he says, “A design that was not just good,” implied unlike what the Milan factory workers previously had in their homes, “but also from the start adapted to machine production, and thus cheap to produce,” which Ben is exactly the point you were making. “With a design of that kind and the innovation of self-assembly, we could save a great deal of money in the factories and on transport, and keep the price down to the customer.” There it is.
大卫：英格玛对此写道："这种设计不仅是好的，"这意味着它与米兰工厂工人家中以前的设计不同，"而且从一开始就适应机器生产，因此生产成本低廉，"本正是你要表达的意思。"有了这样的设计和自我组装的创新，我们就可以在工厂和运输方面节省大量的成本，并让客户享受到低廉的价格"。就是这样。

Entering into the 1960s here and all the demographic change that’s happening, IKEA is perfectly positioned and it’s just explosive growth for the company. To capitalize on it, they obviously need to ramp supplier production significantly.
进入 20 世纪 60 年代后，人口结构发生了巨大变化，宜家家居已做好了充分准备，这将为公司带来爆炸式增长。为了充分利用这一机遇，他们显然需要大幅提高供应商的产量。

They’ve had these battles in Sweden with competition, they’ve gotten around that with their own designs, but now they need to ramp up so much. Sweden itself, even if they didn’t have these problems, just doesn’t have enough capacity for all this new furniture that IKEA needs to source.
他们在瑞典遇到了竞争，他们用自己的设计解决了这个问题，但现在他们需要加大力度。即使没有这些问题，瑞典本身的生产能力也不足以满足宜家需要采购的所有新家具。

Ben: Just to illustrate, your point about 1955, they did six million krona. By 1961, they did 40 million krona. That’s almost a 7x in six years.
本：只是为了说明，你说的 1955 年，他们赚了 600 万克朗。到 1961 年，他们赚了 4000 万克朗。六年时间几乎翻了 7 倍。

David: So Ingvar starts looking around elsewhere in Europe to expand supplier production. Then in 1960, Ingvar reads in the Swedish newspaper that the foreign minister of Poland is coming to visit the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce with the express purpose of developing business relationships with Swedish companies.
大卫：于是，英格瓦开始在欧洲其他地方寻找扩大供应商生产的机会。1960 年，英格瓦在瑞典报纸上看到，波兰外交部长将访问斯德哥尔摩商会，其明确目的是与瑞典公司发展业务关系。

You might be like, okay doesn’t this stuff happen all the time? What’s the big deal? Well Poland at the time was a communist country behind the iron curtain. This was odd. Ingvar is like, well if we could find a way to work with the communists, we could probably lock up a lot of production capacity that nobody else is going to go through the trouble of getting. And I bet they can also produce things pretty cheaply over there and in pretty high volumes.
你可能会想，这种事不是经常发生吗？有什么大不了的？波兰当时是铁幕后的共产主义国家。这很奇怪英格瓦就说，如果我们能找到与共产党合作的方式，我们可能就能锁定很多产能，而这些产能别人是不会去费力获取的。而且我敢打赌，他们在那里生产的东西也很便宜，产量也很高。

In 1961, IKEA goes to Poland to help local manufacturers, state-sponsored manufacturers there set up furniture production of the IKEA designs. By the end of the decade of the 60s, Poland is producing 50% of IKEA’s furniture, including some of the first modern classics like the BILLY bookcase, the ÖGLA café chair. It’s the wooden, curved back chair, the iconic one. If I have it right, I think that design is actually based on a Polish chair design.
1961年，宜家前往波兰，帮助当地的制造商、国家资助的制造商建立宜家设计的家具生产。到60年代末，波兰生产了宜家50%的家具，包括一些最早的现代经典家具，如BILLY书柜和ÖGLA咖啡椅。这是一把木制的弧形靠背椅，是宜家的标志性产品。如果我没记错的话，我认为这种设计实际上是基于波兰的椅子设计。

Ben: Interesting.
本：有意思。

David: It becomes one of the biggest selling products for the company in history.
大卫：它成为公司历史上销量最大的产品之一。

Ben: The other thing that they’re doing here is IKEA is investing in bringing up these factories. They’re trying to build really close supplier relationships here, and basically make sure that those factories are going to be successful in the long run so they can bet their business on it.
本：宜家在这里做的另一件事，就是投资建设这些工厂。他们正试图在这里建立非常密切的供应商关系，从根本上确保这些工厂能够取得长期成功，这样他们就可以把自己的业务押在这里。

David: Totally. They get really, really intertwined, to the point where eventually a little later in the 70s after IKEA invests a ton in developing board on frame “technology” or sandwich board construction as it’s called. This is the LACK table. Listeners, probably many of those of you who don’t, you definitely have seen this thing. You’ve probably owned it. The LACK coffee table.
大卫：完全正确。在 70 年代后期，宜家投入巨资开发了板框 "技术"，也就是所谓的三明治板结构。这就是 LACK 桌子。听众朋友们，也许你们当中有很多人不知道，但你们肯定见过这个东西。你可能拥有过它。拉克咖啡桌

Ben: Or LACK shelves.
本：或者缺乏货架。

David: Yeah. Poland is where they produce this coffee table, that they use particle board, sandwich board construction, inspired by how doors are made, more cheap, not solid wood doors. Today in 2024, the LACK table retails for $9.99 in America. This is a table that you can buy for less than $10.
大卫：是的。他们在波兰生产这种茶几，使用的是刨花板，夹心板结构，灵感来自于门的制作方法，更便宜，而不是实木门。2024 年的今天，LACK 桌子在美国的售价为 9.99 美元。这是一张不到 10 美元就能买到的桌子。

Ben: It’s astonishing how they’ve driven the price down on some of these things.
本：他们把这些东西的价格压得这么低，真是令人吃惊。

David: Totally astonishing. In fact, I think it’s worth a little sidebar on the coffee table right now as an example. It perfectly illustrates the new consumer dynamic and demand explosion that IKEA is about to head into.
大卫：完全令人吃惊。事实上，我认为这值得作为一个例子放在茶几的边栏上。它完美地诠释了宜家即将进入的新的消费动态和需求爆炸。

The LACK coffee table is the first example of this idea that Ingvar starts to develop, of the item with the “breathtaking price.” Every product that IKEA sells in its range should be high quality, great value, ideally way better on both dimensions than any competition.
LACK 咖啡桌是英格瓦开始发展的 "令人惊叹的价格 "这一理念的第一个例子。宜家家居销售的每一件产品都应该是高品质、高价值的，最好在这两方面都优于任何竞争对手。

Ben: Have beautiful form. I think that’s a part of it, too, is it’s supposed to have the form and design. It’s not just build quality, but actually the form should be elegant to look at.
本：外形美观。我觉得这也是其中的一部分，因为它应该有外形和设计。这不仅仅是制造质量的问题，实际上外形也应该美观大方。

David: Yes, but over and above, just like the standard products in the range, IKEA should always have a few products that are these breathtaking price products. These products should also be high quality, but they should be priced at least 50% below any competitive or substitute of products out there. Ideally well less than 50%.
戴维：是的，但除此之外，就像系列中的标准产品一样，宜家应该始终有一些产品是价格令人惊叹的产品。这些产品也应该是高质量的，但它们的价格至少应该比任何竞争产品或替代产品低 50%。最好低于 50%。

A $10 table today, that’s breathtaking. That’s astonishing. Ingvar says, “It’s our job to figure out, start with that end goal in mind and then design backwards from that of how we are going to make that happen.”
今天，10 美元一桌，令人叹为观止。这是惊人的。英格瓦说："我们的工作就是想办法，从最终目标出发，然后再反向设计如何实现这个目标。

He would later write and describe, “The whole idea is based on the substantial price difference, the easily understood price by the consumer. We don’t lose on the deal nor do we make much profit, but at least we make a little, and in the end that’s what matters.
他后来写道："整个想法的基础是巨大的价格差异，消费者很容易理解的价格。在这笔交易中，我们不会亏本，也不会赚很多钱，但至少我们赚了一点，这才是最重要的。

We can’t actually lose money on these products, and thus we need to design not just what the furniture looks like, the manufacturing process, the transport process, the raw material sourcing process. Everything end-to-end about how are we going to sell…”
我们不能在这些产品上亏本，因此我们不仅要设计家具的外观，还要设计制造过程、运输过程、原材料采购过程。一切都要从头到尾地考虑如何销售......"

Ben: The product is the whole supply chain.
本：产品就是整个供应链。

David: Yes. A $10 coffee table. The way they do it, at least in the case of the LACK, is we’re going to wholesale reinvent the manufacturing technology process for this. We’re not going to make a solid wood coffee table. We’re going to use board-on-frame construction.
大卫：是的。一张 10 美元的咖啡桌。他们的做法是，至少就 LACK 来说，我们要重新设计制造工艺。我们不会制造实木茶几。我们将使用木板框架结构。

What are the raw inputs for that? Well we can use the leftover scrap wood chips and then eventually now I think it’s pulp material from the timber. That’s actually going to be 90-plus percent of the material that goes into the product is our waste products from our other things that we’re making. (a) That’s super cheap. (b) It’s super lightweight even though they’re pretty solid and sturdy. Then (c) we can just scale this indefinitely.
原料投入是什么？我们可以使用剩下的废木屑，最后我想应该是来自木材的纸浆材料。实际上，90%以上的产品原料都是我们生产其他产品时产生的废料。(a) 超级便宜。(b) 虽然非常坚固，但重量超轻。(c) 我们可以无限扩大生产规模。

Today, IKEA sells almost 20 million LACK tables every year and has been for decades. They’ve sold hundreds of millions of these things. You can optimize the freaking crap out of your whole supply chain to do this.
如今，宜家每年销售近 2 000 万张 LACK 桌子，几十年来一直如此。他们已经卖出了数亿张这样的桌子。为了做到这一点，你可以对整个供应链进行疯狂的优化。

Ben: That is wild.
本：太疯狂了。

David: I think they have multiple SKUs at that scale. Later, once he, like Charlie Munger got turned onto the virtues of Costco, Ingvar would hilariously formalize this idea, this manifesto in 1995 as the hot dog product policy, because in 1995 they copied Costco and they start selling hot dogs in the stores.
大卫：我认为他们在那个规模上有多个 SKU。后来，英格瓦和查理-芒格一样被好市多（Costco）的优点所吸引，于是他在 1995 年将这一想法、这一宣言正式确定为热狗产品政策，因为在 1995 年，他们模仿好市多，开始在店里卖热狗。

Ben: I brought this up with Jim when I was talking about similarities between Costco and IKEA. He did not believe that IKEA copied the Costco hotdog, and here was his rationale.
本：在谈到好市多和宜家的相似之处时，我向吉姆提起过这个问题。他不相信宜家抄袭了 Costco 的热狗，他的理由是这样的。

David: There’s no way. It’s 100% a copy. I don’t believe him.
大卫：不可能。这百分之百是复制的我不相信他

Ben: I know IKEA started doing it in 1995. There is a rich Swedish tradition in hot dogs. Swedish hotdog carts are freaking everywhere. I don’t think you had to look at Costco to observe we could probably sell hot dogs at a Swedish store.
本：我知道宜家从 1995 年就开始做了。瑞典有丰富的热狗传统。瑞典热狗车随处可见。我想不用去好市多看看，我们也能在瑞典的商店里卖热狗。

David: Jim is a very kind and generous soul, despite being one of the greatest retailers of all time. I’m just going to chalk this one up to that. The IKEA hotdogs today are priced at $1, which is cheaper than the $1.50 at Costco.
大卫：吉姆是一个非常善良和慷慨的人，尽管他是有史以来最伟大的零售商之一。我就把这件事归结于此。今天宜家的热狗售价 1 美元，比好市多（Costco）的 1.5 美元还便宜。

Ben: Well, no David. The $1.50 is a combo.
本：不，大卫。1.5 美元是套餐。

David: That’s what I was going to say. I think, though, you can only get the $1.50 combo at Costco.
大卫：这正是我想说的。不过，我觉得只有在好市多才能买到 1.5 美元的套餐。

Ben: I don’t know if you could walk up and try to order a hot dog that’s less than $1, but it is $1.50 for a hot dog and a drink, and there’s no menu item of just a hotdog.
本：我不知道你能不能走过去点一个不到 1 美元的热狗，但一个热狗加一杯饮料要 1.5 美元，而且菜单上没有只卖热狗的项目。

David: We talked about all this on the episode, like part of how they do this is including the drink.
大卫：我们在节目中讨论过这些，比如他们这样做的一部分原因是包括饮料。

Ben: It’s a bundling, yeah.
本：是捆绑销售，没错。

David: Anyway, I refuse to believe that the ability to buy just a hotdog at IKEA is not a nod to the Costco deal because IKEA also has the hot dog and drink combo for $1.50.
大卫：总之，我不相信在宜家只买一个热狗不是在向 Costco 的交易点头致意，因为宜家也有热狗和饮料套餐，价格是 1.50 美元。

Ben: And it’s right after checkout, just like Costco’s is. It entered the store about a decade after Costco started selling the hot dog.
本：而且就在结账之后，就像好市多一样。好市多开始卖热狗十年后，它才进入商店。

David: There’s no way, there’s no freaking way that Ingvar wasn’t just like, all right. We got to copy the hotdog. The even more amazing thing is he codifies this into the official policy of the company, which is we must have, at least at first it’s 10 “hotdog products” across the range. He later ups it to 20. And it’s yes, it’s like the LACK table. It’s an impossible price for ideally one product in every category that we sell. That is just criminal not to buy this thing.
不可能，英格瓦不可能不这么想，好吧。我们得模仿热狗更令人吃惊的是，他把这一点写进了公司的官方政策，那就是我们必须有，至少一开始是全系列的 10 种 "热狗产品"。后来他又增加到 20 种。没错，这就像 "缺货表"。理想情况下，我们销售的每个类别中的一种产品的价格都是不可能的。不买这东西简直就是犯罪。

Ben: Yeah, and the fact that they just keep whittling it down year over year over year. A great example of this is the POÄNG chair.
本：是的，事实上，他们每年都在不断地减少产品数量。POÄNG 休闲椅就是一个很好的例子。

David: Another hotdog product.
大卫：另一种热狗产品。

Ben: Absolutely. I think they’ve sold 30 million of these since 1976. They’ve just been maniacal about optimizing. The initial POÄNG chair, which was originally called the POEM, not the POÄNG.
本：当然。我想自 1976 年以来，他们已经卖出了 3000 万台。他们一直在疯狂地进行优化。最初的 POÄNG 椅子，最初叫 POEM，而不是 POÄNG。

David: I didn’t know that.
大卫：我不知道。

Ben: In inflation-adjusted dollars was $350 in 1988. By 2016, they had it down below $100, and it’s effectively flattened out. It’s now $130 but with a little bit more inflation. It’s astonishing you can get this chair that is a living room chair for $130. Comparable chairs are $2000–$3000.
本：按通胀调整后的美元计算，1988 年为 350 美元。到 2016 年，他们把它降到了 100 美元以下，而且实际上已经持平。现在是 130 美元，但通货膨胀率更高一些。令人惊讶的是，130 美元就能买到这把客厅椅子。同类椅子的价格在 2000 到 3000 美元之间。

David: You’re not going to buy a POÄNG chair and have anybody mistake it for a Herman Miller recliner.
大卫：你不会买一把 POÄNG 椅子，却让人误以为是赫曼米勒的躺椅。

Ben: No, but that’s not what they’re trying to be.
本：不，但这不是他们的初衷。

David: But it’s pretty darn close for the delta in price. A Herman Miller recliner is what? $5000 I think.
大卫：但价格上的差距还是挺大的。赫曼米勒的躺椅是多少？

Ben: Something like that, yeah. Maybe this performs the same function, but you’re not going to aesthetically mistake it for a Herman Miller chair.
本：差不多吧。也许这把椅子的功能是一样的，但你不会从美学角度把它误认为是赫曼米勒的椅子。

David: Oh, I guess my point is the delta in the design aesthetics is also way closer than $4770.
大卫：哦，我想我的意思是，设计美学上的差距也比 4770 美元要大得多。

Ben: That’s a great point. It has this wow price. When you drive home with it and you set it up, you can marvel at the fact that it only cost you $130.
本：说得好。它的价格让人惊叹。当你带着它开车回家并安装好后，你会惊叹于它只花了 130 美元。

David: Yes. Okay, which brings us to the other, I think really uniquely IKEA piece of this hotdog policy that even Costco doesn’t really have. I just love it, the hotdog policy. IKEA, thanks to the catalog, controls all parts of the demand and the supply chain. They control the supply chain obviously as we’ve been talking about, but the catalog for decades is the primary marketing and demand driving channel.
大卫：是的。好吧，这就引出了另一个问题，我认为这是宜家独有的热狗政策，连好市多（Costco）都没有。我就喜欢这个，热狗政策。宜家通过目录控制着需求和供应链的各个环节。显然，他们控制了供应链，就像我们一直在谈论的那样，但几十年来，目录是主要的营销和需求驱动渠道。

It’s not like they’re having to buy advertising. They fully control the marketing channel. They can use these hotdog products strategically and promote them in each market in the catalog, to then drive the visits to stores, drive the huge demands, position them with other products, then they do the layouts in the showrooms. It’s just genius. It all works together.
他们不需要购买广告。他们完全控制了营销渠道。他们可以战略性地使用这些热狗产品，在每个市场的目录中推广这些产品，然后吸引顾客光顾商店，产生巨大的需求，将这些产品与其他产品放在一起，然后在陈列室中进行布置。真是天才。这一切都很成功。

Ben: It’s amazing that because in many ways they are their own customer acquisition channel with the catalog, that they never turned into a customer acquisition channel for other businesses. They should sell advertising.
本：令人惊讶的是，因为在很多方面，他们的目录是他们自己的客户获取渠道，但他们从来没有变成其他企业的客户获取渠道。他们应该卖广告。

It’s the Amazon play of once you reach scale and you have enough customer eyeballs, you can staple on a near 100% margin advertising business for free. I flipped through decades worth of IKEA catalogs. Unless I miss something, I’d never noticed an emergent advertising business in there.
这就是亚马逊的玩法，一旦达到一定规模，拥有足够多的客户眼球，就可以免费从事利润率接近 100%的广告业务。我翻阅了宜家几十年的产品目录。除非我遗漏了什么，否则我从未注意到其中有新兴的广告业务。

David: Yeah, it’s interesting. But that doesn’t actually surprise me. I think Ingvar probably viewed that as a short-term optimization and that is antithetical to how he wants to run the business.
大卫：是的，这很有趣。但这其实并不让我感到惊讶。我认为英格瓦可能认为这是一种短期优化，这与他想要的经营方式背道而驰。

Now, what’s also interesting, though, is this element that I was just saying of they control the whole demand and supply chain is no longer true in the Internet world. In the catalog world, absolutely was true. In the Internet world, no. The company—
不过，有趣的是，我刚才说的 "他们控制着整个需求和供应链 "这一要素在互联网世界已不再适用。在目录世界，这绝对是事实。而在互联网世界，则不是了。公司

Ben: Whoa, whoa, whoa. No spoilers.
本：哇哦，哇哦，哇哦。不要剧透

David: Okay. We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.
好吧我们扯远了。

Ben: I’m going to take us back to 1958. There are a few more key pieces of the puzzle that needs to come together.
本：我要把我们带回 1958 年。还有几块关键的拼图需要拼凑起来。

But first, this is a great time to talk about friend of the show, Statsig. As we’ve been talking about, IKEA’s big innovation was finding a way to make high quality, well-designed furniture available to anyone at crazy affordable prices. The three ways they did this, sweating design and functionality, having a radically different delivery model, and offering great prices through crazy scale, which we are getting to here in the story.
但首先，现在是谈论节目之友 Statsig 的大好时机。正如我们一直在谈论的，宜家最大的创新就是找到了一种方法，让任何人都能以低廉的价格买到高品质、精心设计的家具。他们做到这一点的三个方法是：在设计和功能上精益求精、拥有截然不同的配送模式、通过疯狂的规模提供超值的价格。

Now, it might not seem this way at first, but Statsig is doing the same thing for their category.
现在，乍看起来可能不是这样，但 Statsig 也在为他们的类别做同样的事情。

David: Okay, lay it on me here.
戴维：好吧，让我来。

Ben: All right, and bear with me listeners. You probably know the rough story of Statsig by now, but here’s a quick refresher. They were founded by a team of engineers at Meta who wanted to build a complete set of data and engineering tools like those that powered the growth at Facebook, and make all of those available to anyone at any company.
Ben：好的，听众朋友们请听我说。你们现在可能已经知道 Statsig 的大概情况了，但我在这里给你们简单介绍一下。他们是由 Meta 公司的一个工程师团队创立的，他们希望建立一套完整的数据和工程工具，就像那些推动 Facebook 增长的工具一样，并将所有这些工具提供给任何公司的任何人。

Okay, so back to the IKEA similarities. Design and functionality. Statsig’s tools were designed and built from the ground up, for engineering, data science, and product teams, by world-class people in the same functions. This means their tools come with things that aren’t really available anywhere else, like advanced statistical treatments, over 30 high performance SDKs, and the ability to deploy your own data warehouse.
好了，回到宜家的相似之处。设计和功能。Statsig 的工具是专为工程、数据科学和产品团队设计和打造的，由这些领域的世界级专家设计和打造。这意味着他们的工具具有其他任何地方都不具备的功能，例如高级统计处理、30 多个高性能 SDK 以及部署自己的数据仓库的能力。

Now the second piece, a radically different delivery model. Unlike legacy vendors, Statsig bundles all of their products, which means that when your team starts to use Statsig, they get access to everything—experimentation, feature flags, analytics, session replays, everything. Rather than charging for seats or licenses, you just pay for what you use.
第二部分是完全不同的交付模式。与传统供应商不同的是，Statsig 将其所有产品捆绑在一起，这意味着当您的团队开始使用 Statsig 时，他们就能获得一切--实验、功能标志、分析、会话重播等一切。您只需为所使用的产品付费，而无需为席位或许可证付费。

This is super different than legacy vendors who are focused on maximizing revenue from just one product line. And because it’s all an interconnected set of tools, you can consolidate your spend and save time on configuration. That’s the second way.
这与那些只专注于从一个产品线中获取最大收益的传统供应商大不相同。而且，由于所有工具都是一套相互关联的工具，你可以整合支出，节省配置时间。这是第二种方式。

Third, Statsig makes their products super affordable because like IKEA, they make it up on volume. They power companies like OpenAI, Atlassian, Microsoft, Figma, and they process over a trillion events per day. They’ve got a great engineering blog on how they do this. This scale helps them basically give away their product for free to small companies and startups, and help larger companies cut their SaaS spend.
第三，Statsig 的产品价格超级实惠，因为他们就像宜家一样，靠量取胜。他们为 OpenAI、Atlassian、微软、Figma 等公司提供支持，每天处理超过一万亿个事件。他们有一个很棒的工程博客，介绍他们是如何做到这一点的。这种规模帮助他们基本上免费向小公司和初创企业提供产品，并帮助大公司削减 SaaS 支出。

David: I love it. I get where you’re going now. Statsig is the IKEA of product tools.
大卫：我喜欢。我现在明白你的意思了。Statsig 是产品工具中的宜家。

Ben: Yes. Listeners, if this sounds interesting to you, there are a bunch of great ways to get started. Statsig has an insanely generous free tier for small companies. A startup program with a billion free events that’s $50,000 in value, and significant discounts for enterprise customers. Plus the team is just awesome.
本：是的。听众朋友们，如果你们对此感兴趣，有很多好方法可以开始使用。Statsig 为小公司提供了非常慷慨的免费层级。一个初创公司计划提供价值 5 万美元的十亿次免费活动，企业客户还可享受大幅折扣。此外，团队也非常棒。

David: They’re so great.
大卫：他们太棒了。

Ben: To get started, go to statsig.com/acquired or click the link in the show notes, and just remember to tell them that Ben and David sent you.
本：要开始学习，请访问 statsig.com/acquired 或点击节目注释中的链接，记得告诉他们是本和戴维让你们来的。

Okay, so David, I’m taking us back here to the late 50s where we have a few more pieces of the puzzle of modern IKEA that are coming together. In 1958, they expanded—remember we said there was just some cold food and coffee?
好了，戴维，我现在带大家回到50年代末，现代宜家的拼图又有几块拼在一起了。1958 年，宜家扩大了规模--还记得我们说过当时只有一些冷食和咖啡吗？

David: Yeah?
大卫：是吗？

Ben: They expanded that. They added hot food, they added self-service. It’s more like you see today.
本：他们扩大了规模。他们增加了热食，增加了自助服务。它更像你今天看到的样子。

David: This is all at the showroom in Älmhult.
大卫：这都是在阿尔姆胡尔特的陈列室里看到的。

Ben: Exactly. The philosophy behind this is the margin should never exceed 10% at the restaurant. They want to use it to attract customers to retain and delight, but they want to make their money on furniture. It’s like David, these hotdog items you’re talking about. They don’t want to lose money. Just like Costco, they’re opposed to loss leaders. I don’t know if it’s as religious, but they are looking to make money on everything they sell.
本：没错。这背后的理念是，餐厅的利润率绝不能超过 10%。他们想用它来吸引顾客、留住顾客、取悦顾客，但他们想在家具上赚钱。就像大卫，你说的这些热狗项目。他们不想赔钱。就像好市多一样，他们反对亏本经营。我不知道这是否是一种宗教信仰，但他们卖什么都想赚钱。

David: I think it’s equally religious for different reasons. I think Costco was about not insulting your customers. I think at IKEA, it’s Ingvar just his background in being religiously opposed to losing money.
大卫：我认为这同样是宗教信仰，原因各不相同。我认为好市多是为了不侮辱顾客。我认为在宜家，英格瓦的背景是虔诚地反对亏损。

Ben: He is unbelievably frugal.
本：他节俭得令人难以置信。

David: Oh man, we got to tell that amazing story. We heard in the research, he was doing a store visit somewhere in Europe.
大卫：哦，天哪，我们得讲讲这个神奇的故事。我们在调查中听说，他在欧洲的某个地方做商店访问。

Ben: In Germany?
本：在德国？

David: Yeah, I think it was in Germany at night. The store manager’s like, okay come on in, I’m going to turn the lights on. He’s like, dear God, don’t turn the lights on. Do you know how much that costs?
大卫：是的，我想是在德国的晚上。店长说，进来吧，我要开灯了。他说，亲爱的上帝，别开灯。你知道那要花多少钱吗？

Ben: And it wasn’t a store manager, it was a really junior person.
本：而且不是店长，是一个很初级的人。

David: That’s right. Do you know how much it costs? I’m going to use this flashlight. And they spend hours going through the store with flashlights.
大卫：没错。你知道这要多少钱吗？我要用这个手电筒。他们拿着手电筒在店里转了好几个小时。

Ben: And because he’s also obsessive about details and a micromanager, he finds like 30 little things wrong, all with a flashlight, and asks for all of them to be fixed by morning.
本：因为他对细节有强迫症，又是个微观管理者，所以他用手电筒发现了 30 个小问题，并要求在早上之前全部修好。

David: Amazing.
大卫：太神奇了。

Ben: But this whole restaurant thing, they really find religion on, this is here because we need to make it worth your while to come all the way to this store. It has to be an attraction. They develop this phrase, ‘it’s tough to do business on an empty stomach,’ so in the early days it’s not like prolonging time in store the way that it is today. But it is, hey, we want to add a Disneyland effect and add perceived value to your trip here.
本：但餐厅这东西，他们真的找到了宗教信仰，因为我们要让你值得大老远跑到这家店来。它必须有吸引力。他们发明了 "空腹做生意很难 "这句话，所以早期的餐厅不像现在这样延长顾客在店里的时间。但它是，嘿，我们要增加迪斯尼乐园的效果，增加你在这里旅行的感知价值。

Today, restaurants—just to flash all the way forward—it is technically the world’s sixth largest restaurant chain measured by number of customers. In 2017, they had 700 million people per year eat at their restaurants. Now, I think that’s not de-duplicated. If I eat multiple times per year, that might be counting me. Otherwise, it’s unfathomable. Does 10% of the world really eat in IKEA’s?
今天，餐厅--只是闪烁一路向前--严格来说，按顾客数量计算，它是世界第六大连锁餐厅。2017 年，每年有 7 亿人在他们的餐厅用餐。现在，我认为这还没有去掉数字。如果我每年吃很多次，那可能是把我算进去了。否则，这个数字就难以想象了。世界上真的有 10%的人在宜家吃饭吗？

David: Even more wild, there are only 476 IKEA’s in the world, so whether that’s de-duplicated or not, 700 million customers across only 476 locations is wild.
大卫：更疯狂的是，全世界只有 476 家宜家家居，所以无论是否进行了重复计算，仅 476 家分店就有 7 亿顾客，这也太疯狂了。

Ben: Totally wild. Thirty percent of people who visit IKEA do so just to eat.
本：太疯狂了。去宜家的人中有 30% 只是为了吃。

David: I love it.
大卫：我喜欢。

Ben: Lots of meatballs.
本：很多肉丸。

David: I have done that many times in my life, most recently in downtown San Francisco.
大卫：我一生中做过很多次这样的事，最近一次是在旧金山市中心。

Ben: I don’t have many of these stories and I was trying to figure out why. I was talking to my wife and she was talking about, oh my God, I loved getting the catalog growing up. Oh, I’ve furnished so many apartments in IKEA. I was thinking, actually until the last few years I haven’t really. I’ve never eaten at IKEA just to eat lunch.
本：我没有太多这样的故事，我一直在想为什么。我跟我妻子聊天，她说，天哪，我从小就喜欢看产品目录。我用宜家家居布置过很多公寓。我在想，其实直到最近几年，我才真正了解宜家。我从来没有为了吃午饭而在宜家吃过饭。

I realized Ohio did not get an IKEA for a really long time. I grew up without an IKEA near me. Even when I went to college in Columbus, they got one in Cincinnati. But it was was until after I left Columbus that they got one there. Until I got to Seattle, I don’t think I had ever experienced IKEA.
我意识到俄亥俄州很久没有宜家家居了。我从小到大，身边都没有一家宜家。即使我在哥伦布上大学时，辛辛那提也有一家。但直到我离开哥伦布之后，那里才有了宜家。直到我到了西雅图，我想我还没有体验过宜家。

David: And the Seattle IKEA is so great. Well I have a question for you then. What year did your family leave Delaware?
大卫：西雅图宜家家居太棒了。那我有个问题要问你。你们家是哪一年离开特拉华州的？

Ben: 1996.
本：1996 年。

David: You grew up very close to an IKEA and you just didn’t realize it.
大卫：你在离宜家很近的地方长大，只是你没有意识到而已。

Ben: Oh really?
本：是吗？

David: Because IKEA has been part of my life pretty much my whole life. Again, I didn’t realize why. The first US store was in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, right outside Philadelphia, which opened in 1985. I was born in 1984. I grew up with BILLY Bookcases and all this stuff. It’s just been a constant my entire life. I went to the Småland, I played in the ball pit, all this stuff.
大卫：因为宜家几乎一直是我生活的一部分。同样，我也不知道为什么。宜家在美国的第一家店是在宾夕法尼亚州的普利茅斯会议，就在费城郊外，1985年开业。我出生于 1984 年。我是在 BILLY 书柜和所有这些东西的陪伴下长大的。我的整个人生都离不开它。我去过 Småland，在球窝里玩过，所有这些东西。

Ben: All right. It is funny how I’ve developed an appreciation as an adult, but it was not a formative thing like for you and so many others. All right, so into the 1960s, David, they opened a bigger store.
本：好的。有趣的是，我成年后才开始欣赏它，但它并不像你和其他许多人那样对我有影响。好吧，进入 20 世纪 60 年代，大卫，他们开了一家更大的商店。

David: They actually had opened a showroom in Norway, in Sweden’s next door neighbor country, to be able to sell in Norway. But that was the same concept as the Älmhult showroom, not really a store. By the mid-60s though, all of this new urban consumer, all really, really taking off. In June of 1965, IKEA opens its second showroom location, very different from the original. This one is almost 500,000 square feet.
大卫：事实上，他们在挪威，也就是瑞典的隔壁邻居国，开设了一家陈列室，以便在挪威销售。但那只是与阿姆胡尔特展厅相同的概念，并不是真正意义上的商店。到了60年代中期，所有这些新的城市消费者，都真正地、真正地起飞了。1965年6月，宜家开设了第二家展厅，与原来的展厅截然不同。这个展厅占地近 50 万平方英尺。

Ben: What? That’s even still probably their biggest store or among their biggest few.
本：什么？那甚至可能还是他们最大的商店，或者说是最大的几家商店之一。

David: I think it is still, I believe the flagship IKEA store.
大卫：我想它仍然是宜家的旗舰店。

Ben: Because even today they’re like 300,000–400,000 when they build new stores.
本：因为即使在今天，他们建新店时也要 30 万到 40 万。

David: It is a circular building inspired by the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. I think even this one is no longer circular. That does not last in the IKEA playbook. It costs 17 million krona to build or roughly $3 million compared with the original Älmhult location that Ingvar bought for 13,000 krona.
大卫：这是一座圆形建筑，灵感来自纽约古根海姆博物馆。我想即使是这座建筑也不再是圆形的了。这不符合宜家的一贯风格。它的建造成本为 1,700 万克朗，与英格瓦花 1.3 万克朗买下的阿姆胡尔特原址相比，约合 300 万美元。

Ben: God, they must have done so much business out of that catalog and those two tiny showrooms in order to leap to this and spend all that money on this store.
本：天哪，他们一定是靠那本目录和两个小陈列室做了很多生意，才会一跃成为现在这样，花那么多钱开这家店。

David: Well by this time, the business was (call it) about 100 million krona a year by the mid-60s when this second store is opening.
戴维：到 60 年代中期，第二家店开张时，年营业额约为 1 亿克朗。

Ben: So US$20 million at the time.
本：当时是 2000 万美元。

David: So a US$3 million investment in this store is a lot because I don’t know what their profit margins were, but a big investment, but they could handle it.
戴维：因此，对这家商店投资 300 万美元是一笔巨额投资，因为我不知道他们的利润率是多少，但这是一笔巨额投资，但他们可以承受。

Ben: It’s probably a year or two of all of their profits go into this.
本：这可能是他们一两年的全部利润。

David: Yes. Most importantly though is the location. It is on the outskirts of Stockholm, the biggest and the capital city of Sweden. For the first time, they actually stock items in the store. By now, flat-pack is really rocking and rolling. They’re trying to fit as much in the store for customers to buy cash and carry out themselves. This is the first real modern IKEA.
大卫：是的。最重要的是地理位置。它位于瑞典最大的首都斯德哥尔摩的郊区。这也是他们第一次真正在店里摆放商品。到现在为止，平板包装真的是摇摇欲坠。他们正试图在店内摆放尽可能多的商品，让顾客可以用现金购买并自行提货。这是第一家真正意义上的现代宜家。

On the first day that they open it in June of 1965, they have 18,000 customers come through. Then in that first year, that store alone does 70 million krona in sales. It doubles the company’s revenue.
1965 年 6 月开业的第一天，就有 18000 名顾客光临。第一年，仅这家店的销售额就达到了 7000 万克朗。公司收入翻了一番。

Ben: They also at this store for the first time now have the setup where customers fetch the products themselves from the warehouse.
本：他们在这家店还首次采用了顾客自己从仓库取货的设置。

David: Yes, and a few more elements of this Stockholm store that you might recognize if you are an IKEA customer today, it’s located on the outskirts of the city with good highways leading to it and lots and lots and lots of parking spaces.
大卫：是的，如果你现在是宜家的顾客，你可能还能认出斯德哥尔摩店的其他一些元素：它位于城市的郊区，有很好的高速公路通往它，还有很多很多的停车位。

Its opening hours are 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM, so that both you as the customer and the employees, the coworkers there, are not battling morning rush hour to get there when, who’s going to be shopping at 9:00 AM in the outskirts of the city anyway?
它的营业时间是上午 11:00 至下午 7:00，这样，作为顾客的您和那里的员工、同事就不用在早高峰时段争分夺秒地赶往那里，因为谁会在上午 9:00 到市郊购物呢？

But it’s open late after work. You finish your work, you finish your shift at the factory, you finish your white collar job, whatever you’re doing, great. Hop on the bus, hop in your car, go on over to IKEA, buy some furniture. Yes, Ben, as you say, you can buy and carry away the flat-packed furniture right there.
但它下班后营业到很晚。你下班了 你在工厂上完班 你做完了你的白领工作 不管你在做什么 很好跳上公共汽车，开上你的车 去宜家买些家具是的，本，就像你说的那样，你可以在那里买到打包好的家具，然后拎走。

Ben: The fact that you don’t need employees to go and fetch things for you, you can just grab them off the shelf yourself after you wind through showrooms. It’s like further compounding their cost structure advantage.
本：事实上，你不需要员工去帮你拿东西，你可以在逛完陈列室后自己从货架上拿。这就进一步巩固了他们的成本结构优势。

David: Totally. Then this is tragic but ends up being great for the company. Five years later, this beautifully-designed, Guggenheim museum-inspired store in 1971 night, the neon IKEA sign on top of the building catches fire and the building burns down. I don’t know if it totally burns down, but it’s a major, major damage.
大卫：完全正确。这是一个悲剧，但最终却为公司带来了巨大的收益。五年后，这家设计精美、以古根海姆博物馆为灵感的商店在 1971 年的夜晚，大楼顶部的宜家霓虹灯起火，大楼被烧毁。我不知道它是否完全烧毁了，但这是一次重大损失。

I believe the insurance claim resulting from this was at the time the largest insurance claim in Swedish national history. But I think this is really part of the culture of IKEA, the company, and certainly Ingvar’s mindset, is every challenge is an opportunity.
我相信，由此产生的保险理赔当时是瑞典国家历史上最大的保险理赔。但我认为这是宜家公司文化的一部分，当然也是英格瓦心态的一部分，即每一次挑战都是一次机遇。

When they reopen the store a year later, it’s got the full customer self-service checkout that you know of IKEA today where, yes there are co-workers there helping you check out, but like you’re wheeling the stuff up, you’re scanning the stuff you’re putting it through. It’s got more capacity for more and larger flat-packed items in the warehouse.
一年后重新开业时，它采用了全顾客自助结账方式，就像今天你所知道的宜家一样，有同事在那里帮你结账，但就像你把东西推上去一样，你在扫描你要放进去的东西。它的容量更大，可以容纳更多更大的平板包装物品。

This is really the beginning of the end of the mail order business here. It still exists obviously for a long time, but the share of the business that is mail order versus cash-and-carry in the stores goes way, way, way down.
这确实是邮购业务终结的开始。显然，邮购业务仍将长期存在，但邮购业务相对于商店的现款现货业务所占的份额会越来越小。

Two, they add a children’s playroom at the front of the store with a ball pit for kids to be entertained while your parents shop, because Lord knows how on earth are you going to do your IKEA shopping with your crazy little kiddos running around.
第二，他们在店门口增设了一个儿童游戏室，里面有一个球池，可以让孩子们在父母购物时尽情玩耍，因为天知道你怎么能在疯狂的孩子们跑来跑去的情况下完成宜家购物呢？

Ben: Which is also a genius way to prolong time in store. You’re just going to buy more stuff if your kids are looked after. I will say the Småland at the Seattle store, the idea is a little bit better than the execution. It was a two-hour wait once you get there to get your kid into the Småland. They only allowed five kids at a time. It was this odd, I was all built up for, oh Småland’s going to be this amazing thing.
本：这也是延长购物时间的天才方法。如果你的孩子有人照顾，你就会买更多的东西。我想说的是，西雅图店的 Småland 创意比执行要好一点。到了那里，要等两个小时才能把孩子带进 Småland。他们一次只允许五个孩子进去。这很奇怪，我一直以为 "斯莫兰 "会是个了不起的东西。

David: I suspect this is something that, a different era when we were growing up, like things worked a little better and you can’t get away with these days.
戴维：我怀疑这是我们成长的年代不同造成的，就像现在的工作环境要好一些，而你现在无法逃脱。

Ben: Totally, like one person watching 40 kids or something.
本：完全正确，就像一个人看 40 个孩子什么的。

David: Drop your kid off, go knock yourself out. Come back with 10 fingers, 10 toes. Can’t do that today. Then finally number three in the newly redesigned Stockholm store, yes they had opened a restaurant at Älmhult at the showroom a couple of years ahead of time.
放下你的孩子，去把你自己弄晕。带着十个手指和十个脚趾回来今天可做不到。最后，第三家店在斯德哥尔摩全新设计的店里，是的，他们提前几年在阿姆胡尔特的陈列室开了一家餐厅。

Ben: But this was the real cafeteria.
但这才是真正的食堂。

David: The real cafeteria like we know and love it today with the traditional Småland-style menu.
大卫：真正的自助餐厅，就像我们今天所熟悉和喜爱的那样，拥有传统的斯摩兰风格菜单。

Ben: Yes, and this is basically it. There is a lot that happens after this, but the core concept of the store and why the business model works and all that is pretty baked here by the mid-60s.
本：是的，基本上就是这样。在这之后还会发生很多事情，但商店的核心理念、商业模式运作的原因等等，在 60 年代中期就已经基本成型了。

David: Yup, and certainly by 1971 in this v.2 of the Stockholm store.
大卫：是的，当然是在 1971 年斯德哥尔摩商店的第 2 版中。

Ben: Yup, so across the sixties they opened more Denmark and Norway stores. In the 70s they opened in Japan, Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore. In 1975 they enter Japan for the first time. They try real hard for 12 years to make it work, but it fails and they withdraw in 1986.
本：是的，所以在六十年代，他们在丹麦和挪威开设了更多分店。70 年代，他们在日本、澳大利亚、奥地利、加拿大、德国、香港和新加坡开设了分店。1975 年，他们首次进入日本。他们努力经营了 12 年，但最终失败，并于 1986 年撤出。

A few of the reasons are the furniture’s too big, they just didn’t understand the needs of that market well, self-assembly was an anathema to Japanese culture, and the delivery industry hadn’t really been built out in the way that they need it to be.
其中几个原因是家具太大，他们不了解市场的需求，自我组装对日本文化来说是一种诅咒，而且配送行业还没有真正建立起来。

There’s a necessary precondition to IKEA entering a market, which is there are robust delivery services to make it work if you’re going to rely on the catalog model. Otherwise people have to be able to drive to the stores and use this store concept where you grab it off the warehouse, put it in your big car, drive home.
宜家进入一个市场有一个必要的先决条件，那就是如果要依靠目录模式，就必须有强大的送货服务。否则，人们就必须能够开车到卖场，使用这种卖场概念，从仓库里拿货，放进你的大车里，然后开车回家。

In these dense urban areas in Japan, that’s not really possible. So they pull-out after 12 years. They did eventually go back in 2006 and make a bunch of changes to make it work today. But I think Japan was, after they saw success in all these other markets, a little bit of humble pie for them not seeing it work there. I think it spooked them a little bit for further global expansion.
在日本密集的城市地区，这实际上是不可能的。因此，他们在 12 年后退出。最终，他们在 2006 年又回到了日本，并做出了一系列改变，使其在今天仍能正常运行。但我认为，他们在其他市场取得成功后，在日本却看不到成功的希望。我认为，这让他们对进一步的全球扩张产生了一点恐慌。

David: It is amazing. In the 70s, really until they go to Japan—I’m laughing using the word, well, we’ll come back to another reason why I shouldn’t be laughing using the word—it’s almost like they did blitzscaling across Europe and even beyond Europe in the 70s.
大卫：这太神奇了。在 70 年代，在他们去日本之前--我笑着用了这个词，好吧，我们再来说说我为什么不应该笑着用这个词的另一个原因--这几乎就像是他们在整个欧洲甚至欧洲以外的地区进行的闪电式扩张。

They went all throughout continental Europe, they expanded to Canada, Australia, Singapore. Ingvar totally got the conviction that the newly redesigned store in Stockholm was it. We were going to copy paste it and bring it everywhere.
他们的足迹遍布欧洲大陆、加拿大、澳大利亚和新加坡。英格瓦完全相信，斯德哥尔摩那家全新设计的商店就是它。我们要复制粘贴，把它带到世界各地。

Ben: And they’re rapidly scaling with profit dollars.
本：他们正在利用利润迅速扩大规模。

David: They’re not raising money to do this.
大卫：他们不是为了筹钱才这么做的。

Ben: As we’ve talked about, they have very thin profit margins. What it means is they’re just doing tons and tons and tons of volume to enable them to do their future growth with their current profit dollars.
本：正如我们所说，他们的利润率非常薄。这意味着，他们只是在做大量、大量、大量的工作，以便用现有的利润实现未来的增长。

David: It’s hard to get consistent revenue data on the company because it’s a private company—still is a private company—but by the 1980s they’re doing $2 billion a year in revenue. So call it 15–20 years to scale from $20 million to $2 billion. It’s incredible.
戴维：很难获得该公司的持续收入数据，因为它是一家私营公司--现在仍然是一家私营公司--但到 20 世纪 80 年代，他们的年收入已达 20 亿美元。从 2000 万美元到 20 亿美元，需要 15-20 年的时间。这太不可思议了。

Ben: It’s interesting. It’s a company that is rapidly scaling at the same time that in their DNA they’re unbelievably thrifty. You wouldn’t expect both of these things to be true of the same company.
本：这很有趣。这是一家快速扩张的公司，同时他们的基因又是难以置信的节俭。你不会想到同一家公司会同时做到这两点。

David: Totally.
大卫：完全正确。

Ben: This is the same guy, just to quote The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. This is one of my favorite paragraphs. Ingvar writes, “It is not all that difficult to reach set targets if you do not have to count the cost. Any designer can design a desk that will cost 5000 krona. But only the most skilled can design a good, functional desk that will cost 100 krona. Expensive solutions to any problem are usually the work of mediocrity. We have no respect for the solution until we know what it costs.
本：就是这个人，引用《一个家具商的遗嘱》中的话。这是我最喜欢的段落之一。英格瓦写道："如果不计算成本，达到既定目标并不难。任何设计师都能设计出一张售价 5000 克朗的书桌。但只有技术最精湛的人才能设计出成本仅为 100 克朗的实用好办公桌。任何问题的昂贵解决方案通常都是平庸之作。在我们知道解决方案的成本之前，我们不会尊重它。

An IKEA product without a price tag is always wrong. It is just as wrong when a government does not tell the taxpayers what a free school lunch cost proportion before choosing a solution set it in relation to the cost. Only then can you fully determine its worth.” It’s amazing that this level of thriftiness and paying attention to the details is also the same company that is in a decade expanding all over the globe.
没有价格标签的宜家产品总是错误的。如果政府在选择解决方案之前，不告诉纳税人学校免费午餐的成本比例，不将其与成本挂钩，这同样是错误的。只有这样，才能完全确定其价值"。令人惊叹的是，就是这样一家勤俭节约、注重细节的公司，却在十年间扩张到了全球各地。

David: It’s totally what enables it to happen because it’s almost like Warren Buffett in the Berkshire Hathaway episodes, where as a young man he’s like, I cannot spend any money because any money that leaves my bank account will not compound. It’s the same thing here with IKEA. They view all of the profits that they are making as compounded value of future investment here.
大卫：这完全是使它发生的原因，因为这几乎就像沃伦-巴菲特在伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司的情节一样，作为一个年轻人，他就像这样，我不能花任何钱，因为任何离开我银行账户的钱都不会产生复利。宜家也是一样。他们把所有的利润都视为未来投资的复利价值。

Ben: That’s an interesting way to think about it.
本：这是一个有趣的思考方式。

David: So in the 70s during this decade of blitzscaling (if you will) for IKEA, Ingvar is in his early 50s. For a couple of reasons, as the company is doing this massive scaling outside of Sweden, he starts to become really concerned about succession and what will happen to IKEA when he inevitably dies. Although he would live for another 40 years after this; he lives to be 91.
大卫：70年代，在宜家快速扩张的十年间，英格瓦50岁出头。由于种种原因，当公司在瑞典以外地区进行大规模扩张时，他开始真正关心起继承问题，以及当他不可避免地去世时，宜家会发生什么。虽然在此之后他还能再活 40 年，但他活到了 91 岁。

Sweden at the time had high and rising wealth and inheritance taxes. Inheritance taxes for large estates, of which the Kamprad estate and IKEA as an asset would definitely be one, was over 60%. On top of that, there was an annual wealth tax in Sweden at the time, which was 2.5% of your calculated wealth annually. Your calculated wealth included all of the working capital in any companies you owned.
瑞典当时的财富税和遗产税很高，而且还在不断上升。大笔遗产的继承税超过 60%，坎普拉德的遗产和宜家无疑是其中之一。除此之外，当时瑞典每年还征收财富税，税率为每年计算财富的 2.5%。您计算的财富包括您拥有的所有公司的所有营运资本。

Ben: Whoa, really? It’s the illiquid ownership of the company plus the working capital in it?
本：哇，真的吗？是公司的非流动所有权加上其中的营运资本？

David: Yes, especially sitting there in the early 70s, knowing you’re about to embark on this journey from (call it) a couple of hundred million krona revenue business to a multi-billion dollar revenue business.
戴维：是的，尤其是在 70 年代初，坐在那里的时候，你知道自己即将踏上从（称之为）几亿克朗的收入业务到数十亿美元收入业务的征程。

Ben: His net worth would eventually rise to something around $60 billion.
本：他的净资产最终会上升到 600 亿美元左右。

David: Yup. There it wasn’t even just going to be enough capital to pay that 2.5% annual tax. Side note by the way, in the mid-2000s, Sweden ended up abolishing completely both the wealth tax and the inheritance tax. Actually, at the end of his life, Ingvar moves back to Småland, moves back to Sweden.
大卫：是的。甚至没有足够的资本来支付每年 2.5% 的税。顺便提一句，在2000年代中期，瑞典最终完全废除了财富税和遗产税。实际上，在他生命的最后时刻，英格瓦搬回了斯莫兰，搬回了瑞典。

Ben: Oh wow. I didn’t realize that was part of it.
本：哇哦。我没想到这也是其中的一部分。

David: Yeah, and he dies in Sweden. Anyway, this kicks off for Ingvar and the Kamprads, a whole saga of wealth succession corporate planning that ultimately has a huge impact on the company.
大卫：是的，他死在了瑞典。总之，这为英格瓦和坎普拉德夫妇拉开了财富继承企业规划的序幕，最终对公司产生了巨大影响。

In 1973, which is the first year that IKEA expands outside of Scandinavia, Ingvar and his family immigrate to Denmark first to avoid the wealth tax. Then a couple of years later in 1978 they settle in Switzerland.
1973年，也就是宜家在斯堪的纳维亚半岛以外扩张的第一年，英格瓦和他的家人先是移民到丹麦，以避开财富税。几年后的1978年，他们在瑞士定居。

Now, Ingvar actually has multiple goals here though. It’s not just avoiding taxes, although he’ll be the first to admit, taxes was the first and primary motivation here.
现在，英格瓦实际上有多重目标。这不仅仅是为了避税，尽管他会第一个承认，避税是这里的首要动机。

In addition to that—I think this really, really was genuine—he’s concerned with ensuring IKEA’s continuity and survival. And there are multiple parts to that. (1) He wanted IKEA to be completely independent from any one country’s political fate. The political history of Europe that Ingvar lived through and that we’re going to talk about later is case in point here. He has lived through not knowing that countries are going to continue to exist, and he doesn’t want any of that to risk IKEA.
除此之外--我认为这真的是真心话--他还关心如何确保宜家的持续性和生存。这有多方面的原因。(1) 他希望宜家能够完全独立于任何一个国家的政治命运。英格瓦所经历的欧洲政治历史就是一个很好的例子。他经历过不知道哪个国家会继续存在的历史，他不希望宜家受到任何影响。

(2) He also doesn’t want anything that would happen within his family to risk IKEA. By this point, he has three relatively young sons, and he doesn’t want to set up a dynamic where the three of them are fighting over control or selling off IKEA or et cetera, tearing it apart.
(2) 他也不希望家庭内部发生的任何事情危及宜家。在这一点上，他有三个年龄相对较小的儿子，他不想让他们三个争夺控制权或出售宜家或诸如此类的事情发生，从而使宜家四分五裂。

Then I think (3) he also wants to ensure that IKEA keeps its focus on the long-term and not the short-term. For him that meant specifically having a huge fear of what would happen if it ever were a publicly-traded company. He thought that it was just wholly incompatible to be publicly-traded and have shareholders and be long-term–focused.
然后，我认为（3）他还希望确保宜家着眼于长远，而不是短期。对他来说，这意味着他特别担心如果宜家成为一家上市公司会发生什么。他认为，宜家既要上市，又要有股东，还要着眼于长远，这是完全不相容的。

Ben: I heard a funny quote indirectly from someone who told me that Ingvar once said going public is a little like wetting your pants. It’s warm and comfortable for a few minutes, but then after that…
本：我间接听到过一句有趣的话，有人告诉我，英格瓦曾说过，去公众场合有点像尿裤子。有几分钟是温暖舒适的，但之后......

David: Oh my god, what a folksy dude. Wow. Ultimately, after a lot of international lawyers get involved, they decide that what they’re going to do is set up a self-owned foundation based in the Netherlands. This is like echoes of our Novo Nordisk episode here.
大卫：天哪，好一个乡巴佬。哇哦最终，在众多国际律师的参与下，他们决定在荷兰成立一个自己的基金会。这与诺和诺德公司的故事如出一辙。

The reason they choose the Netherlands is that Dutch foundations are at least according to the lawyers, the most bulletproof and hardest to change the bylaws of. They’re going to divide IKEA into two “spheres,” one of which is going to be the physical sphere and company, that is the actual stores.
他们选择荷兰的原因是，至少根据律师的说法，荷兰的基金会最坚固耐用，也最难修改章程。他们将把宜家分为两个 "领域"，其中一个是实体领域和公司，即实际的商店。

Ben: The operator of the stores.
本：商店的经营者。

David: Yup, operator of the stores, and the other one is going to be the “mental” sphere, which is the brand and concept of IKEA. This is where you end up with this crazy structure where IKEA is two companies today. It is Ingka Holdings, which is the physical sphere, the technically largest franchise operator of IKEA stores. They own and operate 400 of the 476 IKEA stores in the world today. That is owned by the Dutch Ingka Foundation, which is a charitable foundation. It is an actual charitable foundation.
大卫：是的，是商场的经营者，另一个是 "精神 "领域，也就是宜家的品牌和概念。这就是今天宜家由两家公司组成的疯狂结构。英卡控股公司（Ingka Holdings）是宜家家居的实体公司，也是宜家家居最大的特许经营商。他们拥有并经营着目前全球 476 家宜家商场中的 400 家。该公司由荷兰英卡基金会所有，这是一个慈善基金会。这是一个真正的慈善基金会。

Then you have the mental company , the brand company, which is Inter IKEA Systems. Inter owns the IKEA brand, the concept, and then they license the IKEA brand and concept to everyone else who operates the stores as a franchise operator, of which today Ingka is by far the largest. And in return for that licensing of the brand and concept, Inter IKEA gets a royalty of 3% of gross sales from every store.
然后是精神公司、品牌公司，即英特宜家系统公司。英特宜家系统公司拥有宜家的品牌和概念，然后他们将宜家的品牌和概念授权给其他以特许经营方式经营商场的人，英卡是目前最大的特许经营商。作为品牌和概念许可的回报，英特宜家公司从每家店的销售总额中获得 3%的特许权使用费。

Ben: I’m going to say all of this again in different words just because it is impossibly hard to parse the first time, you can essentially think of it as a franchisor-franchisee relationship. The franchisor who owns the brand, the IP, all that, is Inter IKEA Systems. They work with a company called Ingka, who has the privilege of operating the stores and getting access to the intellectual property in exchange for a 3% royalty on their revenue.
本：我要用不同的语言再说一遍，因为第一次很难解释清楚，你可以把它看作是特许人与被特许人之间的关系。拥有品牌和知识产权的特许经营商是英特宜家系统公司。他们与一家名为 "英卡 "的公司合作，后者有权经营这些商店，并获得知识产权，以换取其收入的 3% 作为特许权使用费。

Every year Inter IKEA Systems, and this changes a little bit over time, the parent company, designs furniture, works with manufacturers to have it made, upkeep the brand, and all the corporate stuff.
每年，宜家家居系统（随着时间的推移会有一些变化）的母公司都会设计家具，与制造商合作生产家具，维护品牌以及所有公司事务。

David: Designs the catalog, et cetera.
大卫：设计目录，等等。

Ben: Sells that furniture to Ingka or any of the other franchisees. The reason there are other franchisees is because you want specialized franchisees in different markets where you don’t understand the local culture.
本：把家具卖给英卡或其他加盟商。之所以有其他加盟商，是因为你希望在不同的市场有专门的加盟商，因为你不了解当地的文化。

That’s why there’s Ingka for a lot of the Western Europe and English-speaking world, then there are specific franchisees that are not Ingka for other parts. But just simplify it for now because Ingka is 90% of the stores. Then Ingka buys that furniture from Inter IKEA holdings, pays 3% of revenue, and then runs the stores.
这就是为什么西欧和英语世界的很多地方都有英格卡，而其他地方则有非英格卡的特定加盟商。但现在先简化一下，因为 90% 的商店都是英卡的。然后，Ingka 从英特宜家控股公司购买家具，支付收入的 3%，然后经营这些商店。

Now David, I simplified out the part about the foundations that own each of them. I think we should come back to that later because there are some interesting nuances there. But that’s the structure they devise here.
现在，戴维，我简化了关于拥有这些基金的基金会的部分。我认为我们应该稍后再讨论这个问题，因为这里面有一些有趣的细微差别。但这就是他们设计的结构。

David: Then ultimate foundation owners for both of these two separate companies, they get set up the Kamprad family, at least after Ingvar dies, the Kamprad family will be involved but does not have ultimate control or voting power over either of these companies.
大卫：那么，这两家独立公司的最终所有者是坎普拉德家族，至少在英格瓦去世后，坎普拉德家族会参与其中，但对这两家公司没有最终控制权或投票权。

Today, certain of the brothers are on the board of certain companies, all three of them are on the board of one company or the other. But they are far from a majority and they cannot, even if all three of them get together, influence or control the decisions of either company. That was super important to Ingvar.
如今，兄弟中的某些人进入了某些公司的董事会，他们三人都进入了一家或另一家公司的董事会。但他们远远没有达到多数，即使他们三人聚在一起，也无法影响或控制任何一家公司的决策。这对英格瓦来说超级重要。

Ben: It’s pretty interesting.
本：这很有趣。

David: And I believe the Ingka company and foundation still rolls up to a Dutch parent, and the Inter holding company (I believe) is a Liechtenstein foundation that owns it. It’s all spread around to ensure this political continuity of the company. It’s almost like bitcoin maximalist people who have ripped up their keys into different parts and put it in different safe deposit boxes all around the world. That is exactly what Ingvar is doing here.
大卫：我相信英卡公司和基金会仍然归荷兰母公司所有，而英特控股公司（我相信）是列支敦士登的一个基金会。这一切都是为了确保公司的政治连续性。这几乎就像比特币最大化主义者把他们的钥匙撕成不同的部分，放在世界各地不同的保险箱里一样。这正是英格瓦在做的事情。

Ben: That’s a good analogy. Yes, you are correct. Ingka, the franchisee who operates the stores, rolls up to a Netherlands-based charitable foundation, where Inter IKEA Systems, that parent that owns the IP, rolls up to a Liechtenstein-based enterprise foundation.
本：这个比喻不错。是的，你说得没错。英卡公司，也就是经营这些商店的特许经营商，是一家总部设在荷兰的慈善基金会，而英特宜家系统公司，也就是拥有知识产权的母公司，则是一家总部设在列支敦士登的企业基金会。

Different, non-charitable is an enterprise, self-owning foundation based in Liechtenstein, which for those wondering what Liechtenstein is, it is a country that is landlocked and sandwiched in between Austria and Switzerland with a very small population, but it happens to be very good for establishing entities like this from a tax and treaty perspective.
列支敦士登是一个内陆国家，夹在奥地利和瑞士之间，人口很少，但从税收和条约的角度来看，它非常适合建立类似的实体。

David: Yup, and you said to just an enterprise foundation I think is the word you used, not a charitable foundation. This is like a circular function in computer science. The stated purpose and goal and activities of that foundation is to ensure the continued operations and success of IKEA.
大卫：是的，我想你说的是企业基金会，而不是慈善基金会。这就像计算机科学中的循环函数。该基金会的既定宗旨、目标和活动是确保宜家的持续运营和成功。

Ben: To secure the independence and longevity of the IKEA concept and the financial reserves needed to ensure this. That is the purpose of the foundation.
本：确保宜家家居理念的独立性和长久性，以及确保这一点所需的资金储备。这就是基金会的宗旨。

David: Which is so interesting. Again, the Ingka Foundation is a charitable foundation, and they do disperse, I think now €200–€300 million a year in charitable donations around the world.
大卫：这太有意思了。同样，英卡基金会是一个慈善基金会，我想他们现在每年在世界各地的慈善捐款达到 2-3 亿欧元。

Ben: And it’s to things you would expect. It’s climate, it’s poverty, it’s charitable causes. But yeah, to your point, the Inter IKEA holdings, the foundation at the top of that is literally to ensure IKEA’s continuity.
本：这是你所期望的。气候、贫困、慈善事业。是的，关于你提到的宜家国际控股公司，其顶端的基金会就是为了确保宜家的持续发展。

David: It is like a Fort Knox for IKEA.
大卫：它就像宜家的诺克斯堡。

Ben: Fascinating. Okay, the structure is going to shift a little bit. As I mentioned, they’ll rename things, they’ll break some things apart, they’ll shift who’s responsible for what on the edges. But that’s largely the structure that is in place going forward.
本：令人着迷。好吧，结构会发生一些变化。正如我提到的，他们会重新命名一些东西，会把一些东西拆开，会改变谁负责边缘的东西。但这大体上就是未来的结构。

David: Yup. So once this is all done and Ingvar and the family no longer directly own the company, in 1976 he writes this document that is intended to serve as a forever operating system of the company.
大卫：是的。一旦这一切完成，英格瓦和他的家族不再直接拥有公司，他就在 1976 年写下了这份文件，作为公司永远的操作系统。

Ben: It’s almost like the Bezos leadership principles.
本：这几乎就是贝索斯的领导原则。

David: That’s exactly what it was like. He titles it The Testament of a Furniture Dealer as we’ve talked about. It’s literally like he’s treating this it’s his last will and testament, even though he stays involved in the business for another 42 years and hands-on the whole time.
大卫：正是这样。他把这本书命名为《一个家具商的遗嘱》，我们已经谈过了。从字面上看，这就像是他的遗愿和遗嘱，尽管他在这个行业里又干了 42 年，而且一直都是亲力亲为。

It’s an amazing document. We’ll link to it in the show notes. You should go read it. It’s on the IKEA website. It’s really cool. It has nine testaments or commandments, and you already read one which was the mortal sin of wasting resources at IKEA.
这是一份了不起的文件。我们将在节目注释中链接到它。你应该去读一读。它就在宜家的网站上。它真的很酷。它有九条誓言或戒律，你已经读过一条，那就是在宜家浪费资源的弥天大罪。

The first one though, number one, “The product range – our identity. We shall offer a wide range of well-designed, functional home furnishing products at prices so low that as many people as possible will be able to afford them.” Talked about that earlier. “Our products must be functional and well-made, but quality must never be an end in and of itself. It must be adjusted to the consumer’s needs.” This is fascinating.
首先是第一条，"产品系列--我们的特色。我们将提供各种设计精良、功能齐全的家居产品，价格低廉，让尽可能多的人都能买得起"。前面已经谈到了这一点。"我们的产品必须功能齐全、制作精良，但质量本身绝不是目的。必须根据消费者的需求进行调整"。这一点很吸引人。

He continues. “A tabletop, for example, needs a harder-wearing surface than a shelf in a bookcase. In the first example, a more expensive finish offers the consumer long-lasting utility. Whereas in the latter it just hurts the customer by adding to the price.
他继续说道。"例如，桌面需要比书架更耐磨的表面。在第一个例子中，更昂贵的表面处理为消费者提供了持久的实用性。而在后者中，更昂贵的表面处理只会增加价格，从而损害消费者的利益。

Quality must always be adapted to the consumer’s interests in the long-term. No effort must be spared to ensure our prices are perceived to be low. There shall always be a substantial price difference compared to our competitors, and we shall always have the best value for money offers in every function. Every product area must include breathtaking offers.” This is before the hotdog analogy in 1995.
质量必须始终符合消费者的长期利益。必须不遗余力地确保我们的价格被认为是低廉的。与竞争对手相比，我们必须始终保持巨大的价格差异，我们必须始终在各种功能中提供最物有所值的产品。每个产品领域都必须包括令人叹为观止的优惠"。这是 1995 年热狗类比之前的说法。

Ben: It’s great. It makes so much sense.
本：太棒了。太有道理了

David: It’s so great.
大卫：太棒了。

Ben: The analog to software companies is engineering for engineering’s sake. There are many examples of architecting the perfect system that’s wildly overkill. Anyone who’s put together IKEA furniture knows anything that’s not seen, like things that on the bottom that face the floor or that face the wall are not finished.
本：与软件公司类似的是为工程而工程。有很多例子表明，设计出完美的系统是非常多余的。任何组装过宜家家具的人都知道，任何看不到的东西，比如底部朝向地板或朝向墙壁的东西，都是没有完成的。

Oftentimes, the back of shelving units or the back of cabinetry is thin, flimsy. You don’t need it to be structurally stable. It’s not because they wanted to cut a corner there and make it as cheap as possible because they view that as a value for you the customer.
通常情况下，货架或橱柜的背面都很薄很脆弱。你并不需要它有稳定的结构。这并不是因为他们想偷工减料，尽可能地降低成本，因为他们认为这对客户来说是一种价值。

David: It’s not that they don’t care or that it’s sloppy. They care a lot.
大卫：不是他们不关心，也不是马虎。他们非常在意。

Ben: It would be insulting to spend money on it.
本：花钱买是一种侮辱。

David: Exactly. This is the polar opposite viewpoint of the Apple, Steve Jobs, the insides must be beautiful. But it’s actually a lot closer in philosophy than you would think. It is intentionality about it.
大卫：没错。这与苹果公司的观点截然相反，史蒂夫-乔布斯（Steve Jobs）认为苹果的内在必须是美丽的。但实际上，它在哲学上比你想象的要接近得多。这是一种意向性。

Nowhere in either company is their sloppiness, but at IKEA we are going to intentionally make the backside and the insides not beautiful so that it is a higher value to you as a customer.
两家公司都没有马虎的地方，但在宜家，我们会故意让背面和内部不美观，这样对顾客来说价值更高。

Ben: There’s so much good stuff in this document just to illustrate Ingvar’s personality. The fact that he wrote this is, well here it is. “Bear in mind that time is your most important resource. You can do so much in 10 minutes. Ten minutes once gone are gone for good. You can never get them back. Ten minutes are not just a sixth of your hourly pay. Ten minutes are a piece of yourself. Divide your life into 10 minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.”
本：这份文件中有很多好东西，都是为了说明英格瓦的个性。事实上，他写的这篇文章，就在这里。"请记住，时间是你最重要的资源。10 分钟可以做很多事情。十分钟一去不复返。你再也找不回来了。十分钟不仅仅是你时薪的六分之一。十分钟是你自己的一部分。把你的生命划分为 10 分钟单位，尽可能少地牺牲在毫无意义的活动中"。

David: I’m so glad that you brought this up. I wasn’t going to put this in the episode, but I totally highlighted that reading it and I was like, wow. I need to think about that in my life.
大卫：我很高兴你提到了这一点。我本来没打算把它写进这一集，但我读到这一集的时候，完全把它突出出来了，我当时就想，哇。我需要在生活中思考这个问题。

Ben: Totally. There are so many times where we’re 10 minutes away from a call that you and I are jumping on, or 10 minutes away from recording an episode, and I’m amazed at the amount I could get done in those 10 minutes when I really was forced to. It’s such a good point. If you actually force yourself, hey just go focus and get 10 minutes of work done, you can be astonishingly productive in 10 minutes.
本：完全正确。有很多次，我们距离你和我的通话时间只有 10 分钟，或者距离录制一集节目只有 10 分钟。说得真好。如果你真的强迫自己，嘿，只要集中精力完成10分钟的工作，你就能在10分钟内取得惊人的成效。

David: Totally. I hadn’t thought about this, but maybe IKEA and Apple are more spiritually aligned than I even realized.
大卫：完全正确。我没有想过这个问题，但也许宜家和苹果在精神上比我意识到的更加一致。

Ben: IKEA and Apple are very similar in a way that I will get to later.
本：宜家家居和苹果公司有一个非常相似的地方，我稍后会说到。

David: Ooh. Okay. I love it. And then another similarity analogy, the last testament number nine is just so early Jeff Bezos shareholder letter-like that we can’t not read it.
哦我喜欢另一个相似性的比喻是，最后的遗言第九条是杰夫-贝索斯早期的股东信，我们不能不读。

The title of the testament is ‘Most things still remain to be done. A glorious future!’ He writes, “The feeling of having finished something is an effective sleeping pill. A person who retires feeling that he has done his bit will quickly wither away. A company which feels that it has reached its goal will quickly stagnate and lose its vitality.
遗嘱的标题是 "大部分事情仍有待完成。辉煌的未来！'。他写道："完成一件事的感觉是有效的安眠药。一个人如果退休时觉得自己已经尽了力，那么他很快就会枯萎。一个觉得自己已经达到目标的公司会很快停滞不前，失去活力。

Happiness is not reaching your goal. Happiness is being on the way. It is our wonderful fate to be just at the beginning in all areas. We will move ahead only by constantly asking ourselves how what we are doing today can be done better tomorrow. The positive joy of discovery must be our inspiration in the future too.”
幸福不是达到目标。幸福就是在路上。我们在所有领域都刚刚起步，这是我们奇妙的命运。我们只有不断地问自己，今天所做的事情明天如何才能做得更好，才能不断前进。发现的积极快乐也必须成为我们未来的灵感"。

Ben: Oh, I share this affliction.
本：哦，我也有这种苦恼。

David: 100% me too.
大卫：我也是 100%。

Ben: I feel for Ingvar that this is his view on life because anytime anything awesome happens, I’m like immediately onto the next thing and unwilling to acknowledge, like it doesn’t give me happiness that something great happened. What gives me happiness is working toward the next great thing. If we ever just decided all right, we made all the good episodes, we’re done, I’d be miserable.
本：我很同情英格瓦，这就是他的人生观，因为每当有什么了不起的事情发生时，我就会马上投入到下一件事情中去，不愿意承认，就好像伟大的事情发生了并不会给我带来快乐。给我快乐的是为下一件大事而努力。如果我们就这样决定，好吧，我们拍完了所有好的剧集，我们完了，我会很痛苦的。

David: I was going to laugh. I’d be like this is the story of Acquired too. I think it’s so funny. But more on the personal life advice from this too. Ingvar (I think) is living proof of this. The man lives to be 91. He clearly didn’t think he was going to live to be anywhere near that age. The stories we heard of him visiting stores, being super engaged in board meetings, making decisions, making product decisions up until the last weeks of his life at 91 years old are (I think) he is totally right.
大卫：我都想笑了。我会觉得这也是《收购》的故事。我觉得太有趣了。但更多的是从中得到的个人生活建议。英格瓦（我想）就是活生生的证明。他活到了 91 岁。他显然没想到自己能活到这个年纪。我们听说他在 91 岁高龄的生命最后几周还在访问商店、超级投入地参加董事会、做决策、做产品决定，（我认为）他是完全正确的。

He writes “A person who retires feeling that he has done his bit will quickly wither away.” No more perfect example of that exists than Ingvar himself.
他写道："一个人如果退休时觉得自己已经尽了力，那么他很快就会枯萎。没有比英瓦尔本人更完美的例子了。

Ben: Happiness for him was making things a little bit better. If he has nothing to make better, what’s his reason for being?
本：对他来说，幸福就是让事情变得更好一点。如果他没有什么可以让事情变得更好，那他存在的理由是什么？

David: Totally. This is the mindset that Ingvar and the company are going into the 80s with, and the 80s is just continuing this compounding. 1981, they open stores in France and Spain, 1983 they go to Saudi Arabia, 1984 they go to Belgium, 1987 they go to the UK, 1989 they go to Italy, and along the way in 1985 as we talked about, they opened the first US store outside Philadelphia, in Plymouth Meeting, right by King of Prussia, frequented it often as a child, outfitted my bedroom and my family room and everywhere else.
大卫：完全正确。英格瓦和公司就是以这种心态进入 80 年代的，而 80 年代则是这种复合式发展的延续。1981 年，他们在法国和西班牙开店；1983 年，他们去了沙特阿拉伯；1984 年，他们去了比利时；1987 年，他们去了英国；1989 年，他们去了意大利；1985 年，正如我们所说，他们在费城以外的普利茅斯会议（Plymouth Meeting）开了第一家美国店，就在普鲁士国王（King of Prussia）旁边。

The interesting thing about the US, though, which I was so surprised reading, because again IKEA has just been part of my life forever, it actually doesn’t work that well for a really long time.
不过，美国的有趣之处也让我大吃一惊，因为宜家永远是我生活的一部分。

Ben: It opens with a bang. In 1985, they do this incredible marketing campaign in the Philadelphia area. Part of it actually was figuring out how it should be pronounced because in Europe it was IKEA, the way you would pronounce it as a Swedish person is IKEA, and the ad campaign they decided Americans are just going to pronounce it IKEA, so let’s lean into it. It was an I, a picture of a key, dash UH, so coming soon, IKEA.
本：一开场就轰轰烈烈。1985 年，他们在费城地区开展了一场令人难以置信的营销活动。其中的部分工作实际上是在琢磨宜家的发音，因为在欧洲，宜家是IKEA，瑞典人的发音是IKEA，而广告宣传中，他们认为美国人就会把宜家念成IKEA，所以我们就把它念成IKEA吧。这是一个 "I"，一个钥匙的图片，破折号 "UH"，所以很快就会出现 "IKEA"。

People knew about it because it had been in Canada for nine years. I think it had started in Nova Scotia. Actually I happen to know the founders of Costco made a special trip up to one of the Canadian IKEAs even before the founding of Costco, because they had so much respect for IKEA as a brand they admired. They wanted to go and see it and experience it.
人们知道它是因为它在加拿大已经存在了九年。我想它是从新斯科舍省开始的。事实上，我碰巧知道好市多的创始人在好市多成立之前就专程去了加拿大的一家宜家，因为他们对宜家这个品牌非常敬佩。他们想去看看，体验一下。

David: Oh that’s amazing.
大卫：哦，太神奇了。

Ben: Isn’t that crazy? So people in the US, especially merchants and people knew of IKEA from its Canada presence, it’s opening the pent up demand in Philadelphia from the cacophony of factors leading to the excitement around it was insane. There was over a one mile long line to get into the store. They ran out of merchandise on opening day and they actually had to run radio ads apologizing and announcing that they were restocking the store as fast as they can.
本：这不是很疯狂吗？在美国，人们，尤其是商人和在加拿大的人们都知道宜家家居，宜家家居在费城开业后，各种因素导致了人们对宜家家居的强烈需求。进店的队伍排了一英里多长。开业当天商品就卖完了，他们不得不在广播上做广告道歉，并宣布他们正在以最快的速度重新进货。

David: Whoa, that’s wild.
哇，太疯狂了。

Ben: That said, a failure of IKEA corporate as they were expanding around the US was assuming that the US was homogenous. I think they expanded to 10 or 12 stores and it wasn’t going great relative to their other markets. I think it’s because they misunderstood that the US has really different needs in really different parts of the country.
本：话虽如此，宜家公司在美国扩张时的一个失败之处就是认为美国是同质化的。我想他们扩张到了 10 或 12 家分店，但与其他市场相比，进展并不顺利。我认为这是因为他们误解了美国不同地区有不同的需求。

David: That would make sense. In Europe, not to say all European countries are homogenous, but any given European country is a lot more homogenous than all of the United States of America. There was also some just basic US market-specific stuff. I love this softer sofas. Americans like to sit in the sofa, whereas Europeans sit on the sofa.
大卫：有道理。在欧洲，并不是说所有的欧洲国家都是同质的，但任何一个欧洲国家都比所有的美国同质得多。此外，还有一些针对美国市场的基本产品。我喜欢这种柔软的沙发。美国人喜欢坐在沙发里，而欧洲人喜欢坐在沙发上。

Ben: Oh really? Is that part of it?
本：是吗？这是其中的一部分吗？

David: Yup. The sofas are softer in America, you sink into them, whereas in Europe, you know, yeah.
大卫：是的。美国的沙发更软，你会陷得很深，而在欧洲，你知道，是的。

Ben: Funny. Around this time, I think when they were observing, the US stores were not in great shape. They were open to the idea of individuals franchising IKEA stores. Now they had this structure in place, they thought maybe this is an interesting thing for former longtime IKEA employees to do to open up a store.
本：有意思。大约在这个时候，我想是他们在观察的时候，美国的分店情况不是很好。他们对个人特许经营宜家分店的想法持开放态度。现在他们已经有了这样的结构，他们认为，对于宜家的前长期员工来说，开店也许是一件有趣的事情。

They did an experiment starting in Seattle. The idea from Ingvar was, if you have your own wallet on the floor, how do you do compared to the corporately-owned stores. It was essentially like a bake-off and a test to see if the bureaucracy was hurting them, or if they had too many layers of management, or if they had more innovative marketing ideas, which the independently-owned stores, specifically the Seattle one absolutely did, created their own marketing campaigns.
他们从西雅图开始做了一个实验。英格瓦的想法是，如果你有自己的钱包，与公司所有的商店相比，你做得怎么样。从本质上讲，这就像是一次烘烤和测试，看看是官僚主义害了他们，还是他们的管理层次过多，或者他们是否有更创新的营销理念，而独立经营的商店，特别是西雅图的那家绝对做到了，他们创造了自己的营销活动。

It became pretty divergent. The Seattle store was actually a leased old Boeing warehouse that ended up being laid out pretty differently than other IKEA stores. You get what you ask for. If you want different ideas, the concept is going to end up being pretty different. They only opened one or two more despite the fact that the locally-owned stores, well the Seattle store, actually did way better. We think it was the highest-performing US store and beat all the corporate owned ones.
它变得非常不同。西雅图店实际上是租用了波音公司的旧仓库，其布局与其他宜家家居店大相径庭。有求必应。如果你想要不同的想法，那么概念最终也会大相径庭。尽管事实上宜家在西雅图的分店业绩更好，但他们只多开了一两家分店。我们认为西雅图店是美国表现最好的一家店，打败了所有公司所有的店。

Despite doing another deal in San Diego and another one in Houston, eventually they wanted to bring the learnings back to the mothership, to have them all be homogenous, so all the US stores are now operated by Ingka. But for anyone in Seattle that during the 12 years of independent ownership visited that store, it actually was a pretty different thing with very different marketing materials than anyone else in the US was getting.
尽管在圣迭戈和休斯顿又做了一笔交易，但最终他们还是想把学到的东西带回母公司，让所有门店都保持同质化，所以现在美国的所有门店都由英卡经营。但是，对于西雅图的任何一个人来说，如果在独立经营的 12 年里光顾过那家店，就会发现它实际上是一个非常不同的东西，它的营销材料与美国其他任何人得到的都大相径庭。

David: Was it in the same location that the current one is down in Renton?
大卫：它和现在伦顿的那家在同一个地方吗？

Ben: I think that where the original IKEA was is now the parking lot and they’ve shifted and built this new shiny building next to it.
本：我想，原来宜家家居的地方现在是停车场，他们已经搬走了，并在旁边新建了这座闪闪发光的大楼。

David: Man, I spent so much time in that store when I first moved to Seattle to work for Madrona. I was moving across country as a young person on my fourth and fifth apartment since graduating from school three years earlier.
大卫：天哪，我刚搬到西雅图为马德罗纳公司工作时，在那家店里待了很久。三年前从学校毕业后，我作为一个年轻人搬到了全国各地，住在我的第四和第五套公寓里。

Man, I was so squarely in the sweet spot for IKEA at that moment in my life. It was almost a weekly pilgrimage that I did to that IKEA store. I used to love going to the as-is section. I would always start there at the end and be like, okay, what can I get a deal on here?
天啊，那一刻，我简直就是宜家家居的忠实拥趸。我几乎每周都会去宜家商场朝圣。我以前很喜欢去原样区。我总是从那里开始，然后想，好吧，我在这里能买到什么呢？

Ben: Because as-is is returns and…
本：因为 "原样 "就是退货，而且...

David: Yeah, broken stuff or showroom floor stuff that they’re getting rid of.
戴维：是的，坏掉的东西或陈列室地板上的东西，他们要处理掉。

Ben: It’s like when I enter a Lululemon. I always go right to the back and look at the clearance rack. Even though Lululemon’s clearance is horrible, they’re 15% off or something.
本：就像我进入 Lululemon 时一样。我总是直接走到后面去看清仓货架。尽管 Lululemon 的清仓活动很糟糕，但它们还是会打八五折什么的。

David: Oh man. Sometimes in the IKEA as-is section, you can get some screaming deal. They would argue everything is a screaming deal.
大卫：哦，天哪。有时候，在宜家的现货区，你能买到一些令人尖叫的便宜货。他们会说所有东西都是令人尖叫的交易。

Ben: But to this point of, the reason they were doing this Seattle-specific thing, the individual franchising, Ingvar was obsessed with reducing bureaucracy. I get the sense this is still an ongoing battle today now that they’re a bigger company in figuring out how to be as lean and scrappy as they were. When you have more committees and more lawyers and more traditional corporate leaders from other companies and all that coming in, this sort of thing is a helpful antibody against that.
本：但就这一点而言，他们之所以要做西雅图特有的事情，即个人特许经营，英格瓦执着于减少官僚作风。我感觉这仍然是一场持久战，现在他们已经是一家更大的公司，要想方设法做到像以前那样精干、灵活。当你有更多的委员会、更多的律师和更多来自其他公司的传统企业领导者加入时，这种事情就是一种有益的抗体。

David: Totally. There’s one other thing that happens in 1985 in IKEA land.
大卫：完全正确。1985 年，宜家家居还发生了一件事。

Ben: Meatballs baby. It’s the final piece of the puzzle.
肉丸宝贝这是最后一块拼图了

David: They add meatballs to the menu. Now this is what’s funny. You would think this would be the capping of his career, the end of the story. It’s 1985, they add meatballs. The concept is perfected. In 1986, Ingvar is 60 years old. He steps down as president of the IKEA store operation of Ingka.
他们在菜单上增加了肉丸。有趣的是你会以为这是他职业生涯的终结 故事的结局现在是1985年，他们增加了肉丸这个概念得到了完善1986年，英格瓦60岁了他辞去了英卡宜家商场总裁的职务。

Ben: It’s the reverse Morris Chang. Isn’t that the year he started TSMC? He was 59, something like that.
本：是张莫里斯的反面。那不是他创办台积电的年份吗？他 59 岁，差不多吧。

David: That’s right. Yes, he steps down as president in 1986. I don’t think anything changed whatsoever in his daily activities. I think he was doing exactly the same things that he was always doing.
大卫：没错。是的，他在 1986 年卸任总统。我不认为他的日常活动有任何改变。我认为他一直在做同样的事情。

His successor, a guy named Anders Moberg, does stay there I think for 12–13 years, maybe. He would leave at the end of the 90s to become president of Home Depot’s planned European expansion, which then ends up not happening until he would leave Home Depot. But yeah, I think he was constantly clashing with Ingvar about like, hey, I’m the president here. No, no, no. There’s only one president at IKEA, even if not in name, and that was Ingvar.
他的继任者是一个名叫安德斯-莫伯格（Anders Moberg）的人，在那里工作了 12-13 年。90年代末，他离开了家得宝，成为家得宝欧洲扩张计划的总裁。是的，我觉得他经常和英格瓦发生冲突，比如，嘿，我才是这里的总裁。不，不，不宜家只有一个总裁 即使不是名义上的 也是英格瓦

Ben: Do you know what Anders Moberg is doing now?
本：你知道安德斯-莫伯格现在在做什么吗？

David: Ooh, I do not.
大卫：哦，我不知道。

Ben: Anders is on the board of directors for the IKEA Foundation.
本：安德斯是宜家基金会的董事会成员。

David: Interesting.
大卫：有意思。

Ben: Yup.
本：是的。

David: Well, there couldn’t have been that many hard feelings then.
戴维：嗯，那时候不可能有那么多怨恨。

Ben: Yeah, which is the foundation on the Ingka side of the tree, the franchisee side.
本：是的，这是英卡这棵大树的基础，也就是加盟商的基础。

David: Amazing.
大卫：太神奇了。

Ben: With two of the sons, two Kamprad brothers.
本：还有两个儿子，坎普拉德兄弟俩。

David: And I think the third son is on the Inter board.
大卫：我想第三个儿子也在国际板上。

Ben: Exactly.
本：没错。

David: So that takes us into the 90s. Basically the compounding story continues unabated. In 1994, they enter Taiwan. In the spring of 1998, they enter China. They expect that China will become an obviously huge, huge market for them, which it does. By the end of the 90s, IKEA is a $10 billion annual revenue business. They’re rocking and rolling.
大卫：这样，我们就进入了 90 年代。基本上，复合材料的故事有增无减。1994 年，他们进入台湾。1998 年春，他们进入中国。他们预计中国将成为一个巨大的市场，而事实也确实如此。到90年代末，宜家的年收入达到100亿美元。他们的业务蒸蒸日上。

Ben: Seriously. There is another thing that happens in the 90s that we have to talk about on this episode and happened way earlier in Ingvar’s life. But this is the moment where it really intersects the IKEA story.
本：说真的。还有一件发生在上世纪90年代的事情，我们必须在这一集里讲到，它发生在英格瓦生命中更早的时候。但这是宜家故事的真正交集。

The news comes out that in his youth, Ingvar was a part of a Nazi and fascist movement in Sweden, which in some ways is not surprising. His grandparents had immigrated from Germany, had very strong feelings, had lived this horrible life. Ingvar very much looked up to his grandma and looked to her for political, moral, social guidance.
有消息称，英格瓦年轻时参加过瑞典的纳粹和法西斯运动，这在某种程度上并不奇怪。他的祖父母是从德国移民过来的，有着非常强烈的情感，过着可怕的生活。英格瓦非常仰慕他的祖母，向她寻求政治、道德和社会方面的指导。

Unfortunately, Ingvar was a part of this Swedish fascist movement. It was provable that he was attending meetings, helping to organize, raised funds, recruited members. He stayed close to this Swedish leader even after the war. In as late as 1950 wrote a letter that he was proud of his involvement.
不幸的是，英格瓦参与了这场瑞典法西斯运动。可以证明的是，他参加了会议，帮助组织，筹集资金，招募成员。甚至在战后，他仍与这位瑞典领导人保持密切联系。早在 1950 年，他就曾写信表示为自己的参与感到自豪。

The net of all this is in 1994 when this came out, he immediately came out and said that his fascist activities were a part of my life which I bitterly regret, and the most stupid mistake of my life. He was direct about it.
1994年，当这件事曝光后，他立即站出来说，他的法西斯活动是我生命中的一部分，我对此深感遗憾，这是我一生中最愚蠢的错误。他说得很直接。

In fact, the first employee of IKEA was a Jewish refugee who had fled Austria in 1943. There’s a lot of complex stuff going around here. But the thing that is definitely admitted to proven is that he was a recruiter-organizer for this Swedish fascist movement during the Nazi regime.
事实上，宜家的第一位员工是 1943 年逃离奥地利的犹太难民。这里面有很多复杂的东西。但可以肯定的是，他是纳粹统治时期瑞典法西斯运动的招募者和组织者。

David: The extent of his involvement in the Swedish fascist movement after the war actually didn’t come out then in the 90s, came out later in the 2000s. Ingvar, I think rightly took a lot of flack for not fully disclosing how long that went on.
大卫：他在战后参与瑞典法西斯运动的程度，实际上在90年代还没有曝光，是在2000年以后才曝光的。我认为英格瓦因为没有完全披露他参与法西斯运动的时间而受到了很多批评。

Ben: He had a friendship with the Swedish fascist party leader who would go on to be this pretty horrible vocal holocaust denier. Ingvar maintained that friendship and even at the end of his life went on the record and said this person was a great man.
本：他曾与瑞典法西斯党领袖有过一段友谊，而这位领袖后来成为了一个非常可怕的大屠杀否认者。英格瓦一直保持着这种友谊，甚至在生命的最后时刻，他还公开说这个人是个伟大的人。

On the one hand you want to say, look, he apologized and it was 50 years earlier and he was 17 at the time. Can’t a person make a mistake when they were younger and admit a mistake and move on? On the other hand, you could imagine wanting to give him more forgiveness if he hadn’t continued to stand by the Holocaust, deny or [...] maintain that friendship.
一方面，你想说，听着，他已经道歉了，而且那是 50 年前的事了，当时他才 17 岁。难道一个人在年轻的时候犯了错，就不能承认错误并向前看吗？另一方面，你可以想象，如果他没有继续站在大屠杀一边，否认或[......]维持这段友谊，你会希望给予他更多的原谅。

David: Or just came clean about that whole thing initially.
戴维：或者一开始就坦白了整件事。

Ben: Or with his vast, vast resources made a big contribution to a Holocaust museum or the families or something.
本：或者用他的大量资源为大屠杀博物馆或家庭什么的做了很大贡献。

David: This is one of these things that covering these old European companies. You can’t avoid this.
大卫：这也是这些欧洲老牌公司的问题之一。你无法回避这个问题。

Ben: Totally. My heart dropped and was also not surprising when we first started doing the research and had no idea and came across. It’s not hard to find this. You come across it for the first time and you’re like, ah, crap.
本：完全正确。当我们刚开始做研究时，我的心一下子就放了下来，这也不足为奇。找到这个并不难。你第一次遇到它，你会觉得，啊，糟糕。

David: Yup.
大卫：是的。

Ben: So coming out of the 90s.
本：从 90 年代开始。

David: Coming out of the 90s. In 2000, IKEA starts their next big geographical growth initiative, which is Russia. They reach a deal with the Russian government that IKEA is going to enter Russia and they’re going to use the market, which they expect to be really big for IKEA, to also pilot the “MEGA” shopping center concept, which I think was actually the brand name of this shopping center, that they then later roll out to other places around the world.
大卫：90年代之后。2000 年，宜家开始了下一个大的地域增长计划，那就是俄罗斯。他们与俄罗斯政府达成协议，宜家将进军俄罗斯，并将利用这个市场--他们预计这个市场对宜家来说会非常大--来试行 "MEGA "购物中心的概念，我想这实际上是这个购物中心的品牌名称，随后他们将在全球其他地方推广。

The idea is IKEA writ large has so much capital and so much resources at this point. We’ve always owned our own real estate and we think that’s a key part of securing that future. We have so much more cash resources now. What if we also invest in large retail centers around the IKEA store, which they hadn’t really done before.
我们的想法是，宜家家居目前拥有大量资金和资源。我们一直拥有自己的不动产，我们认为这是确保未来的关键部分。我们现在拥有更多的现金资源。如果我们也投资宜家商场周围的大型零售中心，那将会怎样？

The idea—this is genius and not novel now because so many other folks do it—we surround the IKEA with lots of partial competitors. Because IKEA sells so much stuff in its range that yes, there could be a Home Depot there, or yes, there could be a Bed Bath & Beyond there—I’m using American terms here; obviously, these are not Russian stores—and we compete with them partially.
这个想法很有才，现在已经不新鲜了，因为很多人都在这么做，我们在宜家周围建立了很多部分竞争者。因为宜家家居销售的商品种类繁多，所以那里可能会有家得宝（Home Depot），或者那里可能会有贝德思贝多（Bed Bath & Beyond）--这里用的是美国术语；显然，这些不是俄罗斯商店--我们与它们进行部分竞争。

Ben: I didn’t realize Russia is where they started the strategy.
本：我不知道俄罗斯是他们启动战略的地方。

David: Yeah, Russia’s where they started. But because it’s now this retail center, if even only (say) 10% of the people that are coming go there for (call it) Bed Bath & Beyond, might also visit IKEA, well then that’s a found extra 10% customers for us.
大卫：是的，俄罗斯是他们的起点。但因为它现在是个零售中心，如果哪怕只有（比如说）10%的人是为了（叫它）Bed Bath & Beyond 而去那里的，他们也可能会去宜家，那么对我们来说就多了 10%的顾客。

They pilot this in Russia, which is interesting, and I think it works pretty well. Unfortunately for IKEA and everything that would happen in Russia over the next 20 years, they end up completely exiting the market in March of 2022 after Russia invades Ukraine.
他们在俄罗斯进行了试点，这很有趣，我认为效果很好。但不幸的是，2022 年 3 月俄罗斯入侵乌克兰后，宜家和未来 20 年在俄罗斯发生的一切都彻底退出了俄罗斯市场。

They had 17 stores total in Russia, 14 of which were these MEGA complexes. They close all the IKEA stores. They sell off the 14 MEGA complexes to the Russian (I think) supermarket chain Gazprombank. They end up fully exiting the market after 20 years. But it does become pretty large for them and pilots this MEGA retail center idea.
他们在俄罗斯一共有 17 家店，其中 14 家是这种巨型综合体。他们关闭了所有宜家商场。他们把 14 家 MEGA 综合商场卖给了俄罗斯（我想是）连锁超市 Gazprombank。20 年后，他们最终完全退出了这一市场。但对他们来说，这确实是一个相当大的市场，也是这个 MEGA 零售中心理念的试点。

Ben: As much as 20 years later they had to sell it all off, or in some cases I imagine they didn’t get a return. They just had to close up shop.
本：多达 20 年后，他们不得不全部卖掉，或者在某些情况下，我想他们没有得到任何回报。他们不得不关门大吉。

It does lead them to this insight, which is we’ve been building these disneylands out in the potato fields—I’ve a few people refer to the potato fields and I read it in a few places—and then everything springs up around. We should probably benefit from the fact that everyone is springing up around it to try to take advantage of the fact that people are driving out for their day at IKEA. Tthey want to be everyone’s landlords who are drafting off the success of IKEA, creating a whole bunch of traffic to this area.
这确实让他们有了这样的认识，那就是我们一直在马铃薯田里建造这些迪斯尼乐园--有一些人提到了马铃薯田，我也在一些地方读到过，然后周围的一切都涌现出来。我们也许应该从大家在周围兴建的事实中获益，试图利用人们开车去宜家购物的事实。他们想成为大家的房东，利用宜家家居的成功，为这一地区创造大量客流。

I think it’s a pretty major strategy of theirs now whenever they open a new store to own as much real estate as possible around it and help develop it.
我认为，现在他们每开一家新店，都会采取一个相当重要的策略，那就是尽可能多地拥有周围的房地产，并帮助开发。

David: Yup. Gosh, I think about here in the Bay Area, the Emeryville store across the Bay and the East Bay. I don’t know how much of the Emeryville complex they own, but there is so much retail all around that. Yes, it would be genius for IKEA to participate in it.
是的。天哪，我想到了海湾地区，海湾和东湾对面的埃默里维尔商店。我不知道他们拥有多少埃默里维尔综合体，但周围有那么多零售店。是的，如果宜家能参与其中，那将是一个天才。

Ben: Another thing that happens around this era—it’s the mid- to late-90s—is they really codify these principles with what they call democratic design. They had always believed in optimizing form and function, like they wanted things to have beauty but also incredible purpose. But they added three more pillars. They now have these five pillars. You’ve got form, function, quality, sustainability, and low price.
本：在这个时代（90 年代中后期）发生的另一件事是，他们真正将这些原则编纂为所谓的民主设计。他们一直相信形式与功能的最优化，就像他们希望事物既有美感，又有令人难以置信的用途。但他们又增加了三个支柱。现在，他们有了这五大支柱。形式、功能、质量、可持续性和低价。

We’ve talked about the quality. We’ve talked about again, quality is not maximum quality, it’s appropriate amount of quality for the object. Low price. We’ve talked a lot about sustainability. They weren’t extremely early. This is before anybody’s mentioning ESG. Most people are mentioning climate.
我们已经谈到了质量。我们又说过，质量不是最高质量，而是与目标相适应的质量。低价。我们谈了很多关于可持续性的问题。他们并不是非常早。现在还没有人提到 ESG。大多数人都提到了气候。

They are making heavy investments. Even in the late 90s when it was viewed as heretical. They probably wouldn’t have been able to do it if they were a public company, but starting to invest in renewable energy and other things. Now this is huge. If you go to ikea.com, it gets a lot of real estate and everything they do is their sustainability efforts. But their goal is to optimize across these five vectors and weigh the trade-off in between them.
他们正在进行大量投资。即使在上世纪 90 年代末，这还被视为异端邪说。如果他们是一家上市公司，可能就无法做到这一点，但他们开始投资可再生能源和其他领域。现在，这是一个巨大的发展。如果你访问 ikea.com，就会看到大量的房地产信息，他们所做的一切都是为了可持续发展。但他们的目标是在这五个方面进行优化，并权衡它们之间的利弊得失。

Their idea of democratic design is that everyone, regardless of their income, can access well-designed products to improve everyday life. Every time they iterate on a product every year, they should be further optimizing some set of the products in the range to get a little cheaper, or find a little better way to manufacture it, or develop some way to serve more customers with the same product to get a little bit better scale economies, or to do something in a slightly greener way.
他们的民主设计理念是，无论收入高低，每个人都能获得精心设计的产品，改善日常生活。他们每年对产品进行迭代时，都应进一步优化产品系列中的某些产品，使其价格更低一点，或找到更好的生产方式，或开发出某种方法，用同样的产品服务更多的客户，以获得更好的规模经济效益，或以更环保的方式做某件事情。

You could imagine a five point diagram where they have a score on each of these five. They want the total area to be as high as possible for everything they do across those five vectors.
你可以想象一个五点图，他们在这五点上各有一个分数。他们希望在这五个向量上所做的每一件事的总面积都尽可能高。

David: You sound like a McKinsey consultant now.
大卫：你现在听起来像麦肯锡的顾问。

Ben: I am confident that diagram has a name and I’m proud that I don’t know it.
本：我相信图表是有名字的，我很自豪我不知道它的名字。

David: Yes, me too. I’ve seen them before and I don’t know what it’s called and I don’t want to know.
大卫：是的，我也是。我以前见过，但不知道叫什么，也不想知道。

Ben: But yeah, that is democratic design.
本：没错，这就是民主设计。

David: Jumping forward to 2007. They hit $20 billion in revenue in 2007 up from (call it) $10 in 1999–2000. Growth is really still going here. Then they hit a rough patch.
大卫：跳转到 2007 年。他们的收入从 1999-2000 年的 100 亿美元增长到 2007 年的 200 亿美元。增长势头依然强劲。然后他们遇到了困难。

Part of that obviously is the financial crisis in 2008 and onwards, but it’s also e-commerce. IKEA makes the considered and deliberate decision here in the mid two-2000s as e-commerce is taking off not to participate or at least to participate only as minimally as is required.
部分原因显然是 2008 年及以后的金融危机，但也与电子商务有关。在 2000 年代中期，随着电子商务的兴起，宜家经过深思熟虑后决定不参与电子商务，或者至少在必要时尽量少参与。

Ben: Which, you can understand, is against every other element of their DNA.
本：你可以理解，这与他们基因中的其他元素是相悖的。

David: Totally. And I’m sure still to this day very much less profitable for IKEA than in-store visits.
大卫：完全正确。而且我敢肯定，时至今日，宜家的盈利能力仍然远远低于到店参观。

Ben: I bet e-commerce is not a profitable business for them.
本：我敢打赌，电子商务对他们来说不是一项有利可图的业务。

David: I suspect that is right.
戴维：我想这是对的。

Ben: If you just think about all the ways in which they whittle price down, every single place they could make a deal with a customer and say, hey, how about you do a little bit of work and we don’t, we will give you a better price, and the customer says, okay.
本：如果你想一想他们降低价格的所有方法，他们可以在每一个地方与客户达成交易，然后说，嘿，你们做一点工作，我们不做，我们会给你一个更好的价格，客户说，好吧。

It’s picking it out yourself in the warehouse. It’s assembling it yourself at home. It’s driving it to your house. It’s, oh, I don’t need the back to look good. It’s every single way in which the customer makes the deal with IKEA to yeah, lower the price a little bit.
在仓库里自己挑选。自己在家组装。开车送货上门哦，我不需要背面好看。顾客与宜家达成交易的每一种方式，都是为了降低一点价格。

E-commerce blows it all up. The overhead, the cost structure required for e-commerce—shipping things to your house, having the delivery network figuring out a whole new supply chain—should it come from the store every time? Should it not come from the store every time? Should we box them differently?
电子商务把一切都毁了。电子商务所需的开销、成本结构--把东西运到你家，让快递网络找出一个全新的供应链--难道每次都要从商店买吗？难道不应该每次都来自商店吗？我们应该用不同的方式装箱吗？

David: Should we use third-party logistics? Should we use our own, et cetera.
大卫：我们应该使用第三方物流吗？我们是否应该使用自己的物流，等等。

Ben: It goes in the opposite direction as everything they’ve been trying to optimize for the last 50 years.
本：这与他们在过去 50 年里试图优化的一切方向相反。

David: And even more than that—we alluded to this much earlier in the episode—it also breaks the beautiful closed loop ecosystem of controlling both the demand and the supply chains. In an internet e-commerce post-catalog world, IKEA no longer controls the demand chain in the way that they did before.
大卫：不仅如此--我们在本集的前半部分提到过--它还打破了同时控制需求链和供应链的美丽闭环生态系统。在后目录时代的互联网电子商务中，宜家不再像以前那样控制需求链。

So for the next four years, between 2007 and 2010, revenue is basically flat. Growth falls off a cliff, zero growth for four years. In 2011, they do start growing again. Revenue hits €25 billion. They enter Latin America. They’re starting to open up new markets again.
因此，在接下来的四年里，即 2007 年至 2010 年，收入基本持平。增长断崖式下跌，连续四年零增长。2011 年，他们又开始增长。收入达到 250 亿欧元。他们进入拉丁美洲。他们又开始开拓新市场。

Ben: But 2014 they decide to shift strategy, but not to start doing e-commerce. The strategy shift is to start opening small stores in cities, starting in Hamburg, Germany. They have now embraced this and launched in dozens of cities.
本：但 2014 年他们决定转变战略，但不是开始做电子商务。战略转移是开始在城市开设小店，从德国汉堡开始。现在，他们已经在数十个城市开设了门店。

David: Including San Francisco.
大卫：包括旧金山。

Ben: It’s this smaller set of products. It’s pretty interesting observing this trend toward urbanization and trend toward buying online. As of 2014, they still don’t really have e-commerce.
本：这是一组规模较小的产品。观察这种城市化趋势和网购趋势非常有趣。截至 2014 年，他们仍然没有真正意义上的电子商务。

On the one hand, maybe that’s the right strategy. Maybe they never should have done e-commerce. I don’t really know. Because they’re not a public company and because they don’t break out segments, we don’t really get to know if e-commerce is a profitable business for them.
一方面，也许这是正确的策略。也许他们根本就不应该做电子商务。我真的不知道。因为他们不是上市公司，也因为他们没有细分市场，所以我们无法真正了解电子商务对他们来说是否是一项有利可图的业务。

What we do know is that over time, their revenue keeps growing. At least if you look at Ingka, the operator of these stores, their operating profit does not. In fact over the last several years it’s been declining. As a percentage of their revenue, the operating profit of these stores is going down.
我们知道的是，随着时间的推移，它们的收入会不断增长。至少，如果你看看这些商店的经营者英卡公司，他们的营业利润并没有增长。事实上，在过去几年里，他们的营业利润一直在下降。这些商店的营业利润占其收入的比例正在下降。

David, I think where you’re going with this is they really start going down, once IKEA does meaningfully start investing in e-commerce, starting in 2018 is when they really put their foot on the gas.
大卫，我想你的意思是，一旦宜家开始有意义地投资电子商务，那么从 2018 年开始，他们就会真正开始走下坡路了。

David: And today, 2024, e-commerce is 26% of revenue.
大卫：而在 2024 年的今天，电子商务占收入的 26%。

Ben: It is what their customers want. You can’t bury your head and say, look, forever, we’re not going to do e-commerce because it doesn’t really fit with our model. If it’s what your customers want—the fact that 26% of people are doing it today—clearly you do have to go do that. But I’m not sure yet that they have a profitable way to do that with their model.
本：这是顾客的需求。你不能埋头说，听着，我们永远不会做电子商务，因为这与我们的模式不符。如果这是你的客户想要的--如今有 26% 的人在做电子商务--那么很明显，你必须去做。但我还不确定他们的模式是否有盈利的途径。

David: Simply just inferring from the financial statements, they don’t, because revenue is growing, e-commerce share is growing, and operating income is flat to declining.
大卫：仅仅从财务报表上推断，是不会的，因为收入在增长，电子商务份额在增长，而营业收入却在持平或下降。

Ben: My only skepticism on it before truly issuing judgment there is maybe there’s something we’re missing since we don’t have full financials and we’re just looking at Ingka, which is the franchisee that operates the stores. Maybe there’s, I don’t know, but yeah, you and I ran the numbers, I’ll pull up the spreadsheet real quick.
本：在做出真正的判断之前，我唯一的怀疑是，也许我们遗漏了什么，因为我们没有完整的财务数据，我们只看到了英卡公司的数据，而英卡公司是经营门店的加盟商。也许有，我不知道，但是，是的，你和我都计算过了，我会很快调出电子表格的。

Starting in 2017, revenue continues to grow on the order of 5%-ish per year. But their operating margin drops from 8%, 6%, 5%, and hovers in this 3%–5% range the last few years. So something is happening that is making them less profitable.
从 2017 年开始，收入继续以每年 5%左右的速度增长。但他们的营业利润率却从 8%、6%、5% 不断下降，最近几年一直在 3%-5% 的范围内徘徊。因此，有些事情正在发生，使他们的盈利能力下降。

David: And seems like a fair assumption. It’s e-commerce. 2018, two big things happen. (1) They enter India, (2) Ingvar passes away in January, 2018 at age 91. Like we said, he’s working right up to the end.
大卫：这似乎是个合理的假设。这是电子商务。2018 年，发生了两件大事。(1）他们进军印度；（2）英格瓦于 2018 年 1 月去世，享年 91 岁。就像我们说的，他一直工作到最后。

One poignant story we heard in the research is after one of the last board meetings that he was part of, he took the rest of the board members and management aside and said, I’m so jealous of you—he knows he’s coming to the end of his life—that you get to keep working in IKEA and running this business, and I don’t. This was his life.
我们在研究中听到的一个感人故事是，在他参加的最后一次董事会会议结束后，他把其他董事会成员和管理层叫到一边，说："我真嫉妒你们--他知道自己的生命即将结束--你们可以继续在宜家工作，经营这家企业，而我却不行。这就是他的人生。

Ben: Absolutely. So 2021, they finally discontinue the catalog. It’s a sad, sad time. At peak, 220 million copies were printed across 69 different versions, 32 languages, and 50 markets. They really used to have their own proprietary relationship with customers.
本：当然。2021 年，他们终于停止了目录。这是一个悲伤的时刻。在高峰时期，共印刷了 2.2 亿份，涉及 69 个不同版本、32 种语言和 50 个市场。他们曾经与客户建立了专有的关系。

In this new era on the Internet, anytime that I have a thought, oh, I need to go buy something, I Google it. I look at a bunch of retailers. I am not specifically IKEA’s customer in the way that in 1970 you would’ve been an IKEA catalog subscriber. And they don’t really have a way to engage people as strongly as they once did. Email marketing is just not the same as what the IKEA catalog was.
在这个互联网的新时代，只要我有一个想法，哦，我需要去买点什么，我就会用谷歌搜索。我看了很多零售商。我并不是宜家的忠实客户，就像 1970 年你是宜家目录的订阅者一样。而且他们也没有办法像以前那样让人们强烈地参与进来。电子邮件营销与宜家目录营销已经不可同日而语。

David: Not the same catalog.
大卫：不是同一个目录。

Ben: Now, on the one hand, they’re competing on equal footing. On the other hand, I’ve spent thousands of dollars at IKEA over the last few years since moving to a new house, having a baby. Yesterday morning, I bought $700 worth of IKEA merchandise in part to prepare for this episode, but in part I needed stuff.
本：现在，一方面，它们在平等的基础上竞争。另一方面，在过去的几年里，自从搬了新家，有了孩子，我在宜家花了几千美元。昨天早上，我买了价值700美元的宜家商品，一方面是为这期节目做准备，另一方面也是我需要的东西。

David: Hell, I’ve got the IKEA high chair that have used across two kids now.
大卫：见鬼，我有一把宜家的高脚椅，已经用过两个孩子了。

Ben: Oh yeah. My son’s crib is IKEA. Oh, and by the way, that $700 was spent on e-commerce.
本：哦，是的。我儿子的婴儿床是宜家的。对了，那 700 美元是花在电子商务上的。

David: Oh, you didn’t spend that on your trip to the store?
大卫：哦，你去商店没花这笔钱？

Ben: No. I had two big IKEA transactions in the last week. I wouldn’t have gone to the store if I wasn’t preparing for this episode, but the stuff that I bought online, that was stuff I needed and I probably wasn’t going to go to the store to buy it.
本：没有，上周我在宜家做了两笔大交易。如果不是为了准备这期节目，我是不会去商店的，但我在网上买的东西，都是我需要的，我可能不会去商店买。

David: Man. You willfully and intentionally cost IKEA margins. Literally took money out of their foundation’s profits.
伙计你故意让宜家损失了利润从他们基金会的利润里扣钱

Ben: I could have taken more time and gone to the store, but this episode would’ve been worse. I wouldn’t have had as much time to research.
本：我本可以花更多时间去商店，但这一集会更糟。我就没有那么多时间研究了。

David: Oh there we go. This is like the version of when you google for products you want click on the organic results, don’t click on the ad result even though it’s the top of the page to save your favorite company’s money. Don’t buy IKEA online. Go to the store if you love IKEA.
大卫：哦，又来了。这就好比你在谷歌上搜索你想要的产品时，点击有机搜索结果，不要点击广告结果，即使它在页面顶端，以节省你最喜欢的公司的钱。不要在网上购买宜家家居。如果你喜欢宜家，就去商店买。

Ben: At some point it’d be great to talk to somebody at the company about this. I’m sure they don’t lose, but they don’t make as much money. I don’t know. Maybe they do lose money on online orders. I don’t know.
本：如果能和公司里的人谈谈这个问题，那就太好了。我相信他们不会亏损，但他们赚不到那么多钱。我不知道。也许他们确实在网上订单上亏了钱。我不知道

David: I don’t know. Ingvar isn’t alive anymore. I don’t know.
David: 我不知道。英格瓦已经不在人世了。我也不知道

Ben: It’s true. I will say a thing that illustrates every point we’ve been making on this episode really, really well is, so they bought TaskRabbit for a small amount, $50–$75 million somewhere in there A few years ago.
本：这是真的。我想说的是，有一件事可以很好地说明我们在这一集里提出的每一个观点，那就是他们在几年前花了一小笔钱，大概 5,000 万至 7,500 万美元收购了 TaskRabbit。

David: Yup, 2017.
大卫：是的，2017 年。

Ben: And I checked the little box, like provide me an estimate of what it would cost for a TaskRabbit to come to my house and assemble all this stuff. $350 on a $700 order.
本：我勾选了一个小方框，比如给我一个估价，让 TaskRabbit 来我家组装这些东西需要多少钱。700美元的订单，350美元。

David: So half of your purchase.
大卫：所以是你购买的一半。

Ben: Yeah. That is the perfect encapsulation of how much money customers save by the IKEA flat-pack, pick up yourself at the warehouse model. In fact, it’s more than that because I think it was like $30 or $50 in a delivery fee. Call it $400 that you’re saving by buying something the IKEA way versus a fully-assembled delivered-at-your-house thing. I’m saving over a third of the total purchase price by doing it the IKEA way versus the traditional way.
本：是的。这就完美地概括了宜家的平板包装、仓库自提模式为顾客节省了多少钱。事实上，还不止这些，因为我想大概有 30 或 50 美元的送货费。与完全组装后送货上门的方式相比，用宜家的方式买东西可以节省 400 美元。我用宜家的方式购买比用传统方式购买节省了总价的三分之一。

David: Which I’m laughing, brings up for me was the ultimate IKEA hack for many years of my life. I think I talked before on the Meta episode about how much I love Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist before that.
大卫：我笑了，这让我想起了多年来宜家的终极黑客。我想我之前在 Meta 一集中说过我有多喜欢 Facebook Marketplace 和 Craigslist。

I decided, probably, I don’t know 10–15 years ago, hey IKEA furniture, despite the fact that you have to assemble it yourself and whatnot, it actually is pretty durable. On the one hand it gets the rep of disposable, but if you take care of it, it’ll last a long time
我大概在 10-15 年前就决定了，宜家的家具虽然需要自己组装，但还是很耐用的。一方面，它有一次性家具的美誉，但如果你细心保养，它还能用很长时间。

Ben: Even through a disassembly and a move?
本：即使是通过拆卸和移动？

David: Oh, I can attest to that. Not just through the move.
大卫：哦，我可以证明这一点。不仅仅是搬家。

Ben: Really? Because my whole thing with it is, to me it feels like once you assemble it, it is good. But then when you disassemble it and put it together somewhere else, it always feels like it’s a little wiggly.
本：真的吗？因为我对它的整体感觉是，一旦你把它组装起来，它就会很好。但当你把它拆开，再放到其他地方组装时，总感觉它有点摇摆不定。

David: Well my hack for quite a number of apartments and houses was just buy second-hand IKEA on Craigslist in Facebook marketplace and be cool with it.
戴维：我在很多公寓和房子里都用过这种方法，就是在克雷格列表的 Facebook 市场上买二手宜家家居，然后就可以了。

Ben: Oh, so you could successfully move the IKEA and it wouldn’t…
本：哦，所以你可以成功地移动宜家家居，而它不会......

David: Yup. Not so much to save money, but more to save on the assembly. That was the reason I was doing it. And they hold their resale value pretty well.
大卫：是的。与其说是为了省钱，不如说是为了节省组装费用。这就是我这么做的原因。而且它们的转售价值也很高。

Ben: Well first of all, they can’t really go down in value. They’re fully depreciated when you buy them for a $10 LACK table.
本：首先，它们不会贬值。当你用 10 美元买一张 LACK 桌子时，它们已经完全贬值了。

David: I was not buying LACK tables on Craigslist.
大卫：我没有在 Craigslist 上买 LACK 桌子。

Ben: But there are some things that are super durable and some things that aren’t. A lot of the press board stuff, once you pull it apart, I wouldn’t expect to be able to put it back together. But they do now sell $1000 dining tables made out of solid oak.
本：但有些东西超级耐用，有些则不耐用。很多冲压板的东西，一旦你把它拆开，我就不指望能把它装回去了。但现在确实有卖 1000 美元的实心橡木餐桌。

First of all, I didn’t realize you could get just the materials to make that for $1000. That’s a $4000 or $5000 table at other retailers. But something like that, I expect to survive moves very well. I think it’s just unfair to say everything from this retailer is throw-away or everything from this retailer is infinitely durable. Neither are true.
首先，我没想到 1000 美元就能买到做这个的材料。在其他零售商那里，这可是一张价值四五千美元的桌子。但像这样的东西，我希望它能很好地存活下来。我认为，说这家零售商的所有东西都是可有可无的，或者说这家零售商的所有东西都是无限耐用的，都是不公平的。这两种说法都不对。

David: What I really used to do my hack with was the HEMNES line, HEMNES bookcases. We have had so many HEMNES bookcases in our homes over the years. Jenny did a PhD, so she has lots of books. Lord knows I have tons of books now as my vocation, our vocation. And HEMNES bookcases will last if you take care of them, and you disassemble, reassemble.
大卫：我真正用来做黑客的是 "海姆尼斯 "系列，"海姆尼斯 "书柜。多年来，我们家里有很多海姆尼斯书柜。珍妮是个博士，所以她有很多书。天知道我现在有多少书，这是我的天职，也是我们的天职。只要你细心呵护，拆卸、重新组装，海姆尼斯书柜就能经久耐用。

Ben: Fascinating. All right, should I take us through to the state of the business today and then we’ll get into the analysis?
本：令人着迷。好吧，要不要我先介绍一下今天的业务状况，然后再进行分析？

David: Let’s do it.
我们开始吧。

Ben: Awesome. But before we do that, we have one more of our favorite companies to tell you about. The climate-aligned AI infrastructure company, Crusoe.
本：太棒了。但在此之前，我们还要向大家介绍一家我们最喜欢的公司。与气候相匹配的人工智能基础设施公司--克鲁索（Crusoe）。

David: Crusoe is the vertically-integrated cloud platform built specifically for AI workloads, and was recently named the gold standard of AI cloud providers by Dylan Patel over at SemiAnalysis.
大卫：Crusoe 是专为人工智能工作负载打造的垂直整合云平台，最近被 SemiAnalysis 网站的迪伦-帕特尔（Dylan Patel）评为人工智能云提供商的黄金标准。

Crusoe is just such a cool story. They build and operate enterprise-grade GPU data centers that are specifically designed for AI workloads, and each one is powered by low-cost stranded energy that otherwise goes to waste, or worse, gets emitted as greenhouse gasses.
Crusoe 就是这样一个很酷的故事。他们建造并运营专为人工智能工作负载设计的企业级 GPU 数据中心，而且每个数据中心都由低成本的闲置能源提供动力，否则这些能源就会被浪费掉，甚至作为温室气体排放。

Ben: They’ve totally reimagined the traditional data center architecture to support the huge power-cooling and compute density needs of AI. Like IKEA, they’ve done it all with a focus on getting the lowest cost of inputs possible—in this case energy—which enables them to offer better prices to customers, which leads to signing more long-term contracts, which leads to Crusoe building more capacity faster, which just makes the whole flywheel spin over and over again.
本：他们完全重新构想了传统的数据中心架构，以支持人工智能对电力冷却和计算密度的巨大需求。就像宜家家居一样，他们所做的一切都是为了尽可能降低投入成本--这里指的是能源--这样他们就能为客户提供更优惠的价格，从而签订更多的长期合同，这样克鲁索就能以更快的速度建设更多的容量，这只会让整个飞轮一次又一次地旋转。

And it’s not just better on cost, it’s also super fast and reliable thanks to innovations across virtualization, networking and other areas of the stack. They can do things like boot up a VM in under 90 seconds.
它不仅在成本上更胜一筹，而且由于在虚拟化、网络和堆栈的其他方面进行了创新，因此速度和可靠性也超高。它们可以在 90 秒内启动虚拟机。

David: Power demand in GPUs is increasing dramatically, which means that (1) the traditional data center design and engineering of the hyperscalers is no longer optimal, and (2) energy, not compute, is actually becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI.
大卫：GPU 的功耗需求正在急剧增加，这意味着：(1) 传统的数据中心设计和超级计算器工程不再是最佳选择；(2) 能源，而不是计算，实际上正在成为扩展人工智能的限制因素。

Ben: Crusoee’s infrastructure, unlike the hyperscalers, is built from the ground-up for GPUs with elements like high density racks and direct liquid to chip cooling, which enables them to support the most demanding AI workloads that traditional data centers just cannot.
Ben：Crusoee 的基础架构与超大规模服务器不同，是专为 GPU 从底层开始构建的，采用了高密度机架和直接液态芯片冷却等元素，这使它们能够支持传统数据中心无法支持的最苛刻的人工智能工作负载。

David: And because Crusoe can build with this unique access to stranded energy, they’re able to bring massive amounts of compute online all at once. They currently have 15 gigawatts in their development pipeline, and their coming Abilene, Texas facility alone has over 1.2 gigawatts planned, which will make it one of the largest clusters in the entire world.
大卫：由于克鲁索公司可以利用这种独特的闲置能源进行建设，因此他们能够一次性上线大量的计算设备。他们目前有 15 千兆瓦的开发管道，仅即将在德克萨斯州阿比林建成的设施就计划建设超过 1.2 千兆瓦，这将使其成为全球最大的集群之一。

Ben: It’s just an amazing company. The net of all this is Crusoe can provide nuclear levels of power for less costs than other cloud providers, with low or in some cases actually negative emissions, David and I are super proud to be working with them and also to both be investors.
本：这是一家了不起的公司。与其他云服务提供商相比，Crusoe 能以更低的成本提供核电级别的电力，而且排放很低，有时甚至是负排放，能与他们合作并成为他们的投资者，大卫和我都感到非常自豪。

To learn more about Crusoe, go to crusoe.ai/acquired or click the link in the show notes, and just tell them that Ben and David sent you our thanks to Crusoe.
要了解有关 Crusoe 的更多信息，请访问 crusoe.ai/acquired，或点击节目注释中的链接，告诉他们本和大卫向你们转达了我们对 Crusoe 的感谢。

All right. The IKEA business today. We’ll start with a quick refresher on structure. There are two branches of IKEA to think about. There’s Inter IKEA Systems. This is the corporate entity that owns the brand and the IP. As of 2016, they also do all the product development, supply chain, all that stuff. They own all the inventory and the franchisees take possession of it almost on a real time basis as they need it.
好的今天的宜家业务。我们先来了解一下宜家的结构。宜家家居有两个分公司一个是英特宜家系统。这是拥有品牌和知识产权的公司实体。截至 2016 年，他们还负责所有产品开发、供应链等工作。他们拥有所有的库存，而特许经营商在需要时几乎是实时地占有这些库存。

Inter IKEA does three things: franchise; the range, which is the products; and supply, which is supply chain. The way that I would think about this is there are like two things in one: (1) they’re a company that designs and makes products to sell to franchisees, and (2) they’re a licensor that takes a 3% rake effectively on all sales, which it’s pretty fair.
Inter IKEA 做了三件事：特许经营；系列产品，即产品；供应，即供应链。我认为这就像两件事情合二为一：(1) 他们是一家设计和生产产品的公司，将产品卖给加盟商；(2) 他们是一家授权商，从所有销售额中抽取 3% 的佣金，这很公平。

David: Totally, 3% of your revenue for the IKEA brand and concept. That seems very fair.
大卫：完全正确，宜家品牌和概念收入的 3%。这似乎很公平。

Ben: But also if you’re selling razor-thin margins, it’s actually a huge percentage of your profit pool. It’s like payment processing. You’re like, oh, what’s 3%? And then you look at the profits on a retailer and you’re like, whoa, I’m shipping half my profits to…
本：但同样，如果你的销售利润微薄，那么它实际上在你的利润池中占了很大比例。就像支付处理一样。你会想，哦，3% 算什么？然后你再看看零售商的利润，你就会想，哇，我一半的利润都运到......

David: Yeah. What did you say? Operating income margin is these days are like 6%–7% if I remember right.
是的你说什么？如果我没记错的话，现在的营业收入利润率是 6%-7%。

Ben: That’s high. It’s like 4%–5%.
本：很高。好像是 4%-5%。

David: Okay, yeah. They’re taking basically half of your operating income.
大卫：好的，是的。他们基本上拿走了你一半的营业收入。

Ben: On the other hand, are these really different companies? There’s not really a deal between the two.
本：另一方面，这两家公司真的是不同的公司吗？这两家公司之间其实并没有什么交易。

David: And there’s actually a specific tax reason why it’s a royalty on sales.
大卫：实际上，销售特许权使用费是有具体税收原因的。

Ben: From what I could tell—I’m not a tax expert—I think royalties are tax-deductible. By shipping money around between two entities instead of having it just be one simple C-Corp that runs the whole company, they are actually able to deduct those royalties off their taxes. Yeah, it is helpful for tax purposes.
本：据我所知，我不是税务专家，我认为特许权使用费是可以减税的。通过在两个实体之间转移资金，而不是由一个简单的 C-Corp 来运营整个公司，他们实际上可以从税款中扣除这些特许权使用费。是的，这对纳税很有帮助。

That parent company did $27 billion in sales of goods and they made $1.4 billion from franchise fees. That number pencils pretty well. IKEA as a whole did $47 billion in revenue. When you think about it, the parent company sells $27 billion of goods to the franchises who then have their own top line of $47 billion. You can start to understand the margin structure a little bit
该母公司的商品销售额为 270 亿美元，特许经营费收入为 14 亿美元。这个数字相当不错。宜家整体收入为 470 亿美元。仔细想想，母公司向特许经营店销售了 270 亿美元的商品，而特许经营店自己也有 470 亿美元的收入。你可以开始稍微了解一下利润结构了

David: And then they get that (call it) $1.5–$2 billion-ish effective cash flow back in the royalty of that $47 billion total revenue.
大卫：然后，他们就能从 470 亿美元的总收入中获得 15-20 亿美元左右的有效现金流。

Ben: That’s exactly right. Okay, where does money go when it comes up to the Inter IKEA Foundation? This is again the parent company, the one who owns the IP, the one who develops the product range, all this stuff, but they don’t operate the stores.
本：完全正确。好吧，宜家基金会的钱都花到哪里去了？这也是宜家的母公司，拥有知识产权，开发产品系列等，但他们并不经营商场。

That company is owned by the Inter IKEA Foundation in Liechtenstein. The main purpose, as we talked about, is to ensure the independence and the longevity of the IKEA concept and to own and govern the IKEA group. The Inter IKEA Foundation is a self-owned entity. That’s a new thing that I didn’t know existed.
该公司由位于列支敦士登的英特宜家基金会所有。正如我们所谈到的，其主要目的是确保宜家家居理念的独立性和长久性，并拥有和管理宜家家居集团。英特宜家基金会是一个自主经营的实体。这是我不知道的新事物。

David: Is the Novo Nordisk Foundation also self-owned? This is sounding familiar to me.
大卫：诺和诺德基金会也是自己拥有的吗？这听起来有点耳熟。

Ben: Maybe, yeah. And there is no, nor can there be any individual beneficiary. Funds held by the foundation can only be used in accordance with the foundation’s purpose, which again, the purpose is ensuring the future of IKEA.
本：也许吧，是的。没有，也不可能有任何个人受益人。基金会持有的资金只能按照基金会的宗旨使用，而基金会的宗旨就是确保宜家的未来。

David, you were doing some napkin math on this. What cash do you think is held by the Inter IKEA Foundation in Liechtenstein?
戴维，你在用餐巾纸计算这件事。你认为列支敦士登的宜家基金会持有多少现金？

David: It was reported around 2011 that it had roughly €15 billion in assets, and that does not include the value of the company. That’s just cash and marketable securities (call it) sitting on the balance sheet of this foundation.
大卫：据报道，2011 年左右，基金会拥有大约 150 亿欧元的资产，这还不包括公司的价值。这只是基金会资产负债表上的现金和有价证券。

In the 13 years since then, if you can infer from the financial statements—I think they actually do disclose now how much the operating holding company sends in cash up to the foundation every year—it’s like €1 billion in cash every year that gets sent to the Inter IKEA Foundation.
在那之后的 13 年里，如果你能从财务报表中推断出--我想他们现在确实披露了运营控股公司每年向基金会上缴多少现金--那么每年大概有 10 亿欧元的现金上缴给宜家基金会。

Just add €13 billion more in cash every year, you’re up to (call it) close to €30 billion in assets there. That’s assuming no investment return compounding.
每年再加上 130 亿欧元的现金，你就会有接近 300 亿欧元的资产。这还是在没有投资回报复利的情况下。

Ben: But 2011 to today is among the best investment returns in history, assuming they were just at market beta.
本：但 2011 年到今天是历史上投资回报最好的年份之一，假设他们只是按市场贝塔值计算的话。

David: Totally. That is like, like €50 billion-ish. Seems like a wildly conservative estimate for the amount of assets in this foundation. Arguably closer to €100 billion, but we don’t know.
大卫：完全正确。好像是 500 亿欧元左右。对于这个基金会的资产数额，这似乎是一个非常保守的估计。可以说接近 1000 亿欧元，但我们也不知道。

Ben: It’s not a charitable foundation. Let’s be super clear. This is an enterprise foundation and their purpose is to ensure the continuity of IKEA. What do you do with $50-plus billion?
本：这不是一个慈善基金会。让我们把话说清楚。这是一个企业基金会，其目的是确保宜家的持续发展。500多亿美元能做什么？

David: Well, you start investing in retail centers.
大卫：嗯，你开始投资零售中心。

Ben: This is not including the ownership of Inter IKEA itself, the company. This is in addition to the value of your ownership of that enterprise.
本：这还不包括英特宜家公司本身的所有权。这是你对该企业所有权价值的补充。

David: Remember we were joking at the arena show that the Forbes net worth estimations of Taylor Swift are laughable because they’re just looking at what is her bank account and they’re not enterprise valuing Taylor Swift. This is like the bank account of the foundation, not valuing Inter IKEA the company at anything.
大卫：还记得我们在赛场上开玩笑说，《福布斯》对泰勒-斯威夫特净资产的估算是可笑的，因为他们只是在看她的银行账户，而不是企业对泰勒-斯威夫特的估值。这就像基金会的银行账户，而不是宜家公司的估值。

Ben: It’s fascinating.
本：这很吸引人。

David: Yes, one of the largest entities in the world by assets. Then if you include the value of IKEA, I mean, my God, what do you value IKEA at as a company?
大卫：是的，按资产计算，它是世界上最大的实体之一。如果再算上宜家的价值，我的意思是，天哪，你觉得宜家作为一家公司的价值是多少？

Ben: It’s funny. I had done some napkin math on if I were to buy all of IKEA including Inter and Ingka, what would I value it at? Maybe now’s a good time to share that. The whole company does something like $45 billion a year. It’s growing at about 5% per year.
本：这很有趣。我曾在餐巾纸上算过一笔账，如果我要买下包括英特和英卡在内的所有宜家家居，我的估价是多少？也许现在是分享的好时机。整个公司每年的营业额大约为 450 亿美元。年增长率约为 5%。

David: But operating income, at least for the moment, is not growing.
大卫：但营业收入至少目前没有增长。

Ben: Right. There’s another company out there that grows at about 5% a year, that has a net income margin that bops around the 3% range, that’s also a retailer. And that company is Walmart.
本：对。还有一家公司的年增长率约为 5%，净利润率在 3% 左右，也是一家零售商。这家公司就是沃尔玛。

Walmart is valued at about 1.1x sales. you could value all of IKEA. Again, this would be Inter plus Ingka plus the other franchisees at about $50–$60 billion.
沃尔玛的估值约为销售额的 1.1 倍。同样，英特加英卡加其他特许经营商的价值约为 500 亿至 600 亿美元。

David: That feels low to me just given the durability and defensibility of IKEA. But you could also make an argument that it’s fair.
大卫：考虑到宜家家居的耐用性和可维护性，我觉得这个价格太低了。但你也可以说这是公平的。

Ben: Yeah, but call it $50–$100 billion. I don’t really care about slicing it Inter versus Ingka. I think this is all silly. But it is interesting to think there’s a cash pile that the Inter IKEA Foundation has to ensure the continuity of IKEA that is approximately equal in value to all of IKEA itself.
本：是的，但也就 500 亿至 1000 亿美元吧。我并不关心国米和英卡的切分。我觉得这很傻。但有趣的是，英特宜家基金会为确保宜家的持续发展而拥有的现金，其价值约等于宜家本身的全部资产。

David: That cash pile is almost certainly between €/$50 and €/$100 billion, whatever you want to say. Similarly, the value of IKEA is somewhere between €/$50 and €/$100 billion.
大卫：不管你怎么说，那堆现金几乎肯定在 500 亿欧元到 1000 亿欧元之间。同样，宜家的价值也在 500 亿欧元到 1000 亿欧元之间。

Ben: Totally fascinating. Then flipping over to the Ingka side of the house, this is the largest franchisee with 90% of stores. That is the 400 different IKEA stores out of the, what’d you say? It was 470 total?
本：完全令人着迷。然后翻到宜家这边，这是最大的特许经营商，拥有 90% 的门店。你说的是 400 家不同的宜家专卖店？总共是 470 家？

David: 476, I think.
大卫：476，我想。

Ben: That they operate. They also have what they call Ingka Centers, which is this shopping center concept we talked about. They have 44 of those experience-oriented shopping centers across Europe and China, and more are on the way.
本：是他们经营的。他们还有所谓的 Ingka Centers，也就是我们说过的购物中心概念。他们在欧洲和中国有 44 个这种以体验为导向的购物中心，而且更多的购物中心正在建设中。

David: And they’re also applying that concept to the small city stores here. Interestingly in San Francisco, the IKEA here in downtown San Francisco, IKEA bought the building. It’s not just they leased some space in downtown San Francisco. It was actually an empty building. It was empty for a long, long time on Market Street.
大卫：他们也将这一概念应用到了这里的小城市商店中。有趣的是，在旧金山，宜家买下了旧金山市中心的宜家家居大楼。他们不仅仅是在旧金山市中心租赁了一些空间。实际上，这是一栋空楼。它在市场街上空置了很久很久。

They bought the whole thing, they put IKEA in, and now they’re putting other tenants into this complex. IKEA is participating in San Francisco downtown urban renewal, which is wild. But I think it’s all part of this, hey, we need to make some investments with all this cash.
他们买下了整栋楼，把宜家搬进来，现在又把其他租户搬进来。宜家正在参与旧金山市中心的城市改造，这太疯狂了。但我认为这只是其中的一部分，嘿，我们需要用这些现金进行一些投资。

Ben: Yup. They have this arm Ingka Investments that basically allows them to invest in other companies that they think will in some way be additive to their core business. It’s effectively super large scale corporate venture. Then their owner—this is again the franchisee that operates 90% of the stores—is the Stichting Ingka Foundation based in the Netherlands.
本：是的。他们有一个分支机构 Ingka Investments，该机构基本上允许他们投资其他公司，只要他们认为这些公司在某种程度上能增加他们的核心业务。这实际上是一个超大规模的企业风险投资。他们的所有者是位于荷兰的英卡基金会（Stichting Ingka Foundation）。

The other one was Liechtenstein, this one’s the Netherlands. This one is an actual charitable foundation that has a specific focus on climate and poverty. With this one, Ingka sends about 15% of their net income up to that charity, and then they use the other 85% for reinvesting in the business. Call it €200-€300 million a year that Ingka actually ships up to their charitable foundation.
另一个是列支敦士登，这个是荷兰。这是一个真正的慈善基金会，专门关注气候和贫困问题。英卡将其净收入的 15%捐给该慈善机构，然后将另外 85%用于业务再投资。英卡每年向慈善基金会实际捐赠 2-3 亿欧元。

From what we can tell, it seems like the charitable foundation then does about €200 million of grant-making every year. Hard to know exactly what the endowment size is of the Stichting Ingka Foundation’s net of the asset itself. Any estimates that float around include the enterprise value of Ingka. But there exists some cash pile there that probably grows modestly because they’re doing so much donating out of the endowment.
据我们所知，该慈善基金会每年的捐赠额约为 2 亿欧元。很难确切知道 Stichting Ingka 基金会扣除资产本身后的捐赠规模。任何估计都包括英卡公司的企业价值。但由于他们从捐赠基金中进行了大量的捐赠活动，因此那里的现金可能会有一定的增长。

David: All that reminds me. There’s another big cash pile that we forgot about.
这倒提醒了我。还有一大堆现金被我们遗忘了。

Ben: Oh, the actual balance sheet?
本：哦，实际资产负债表？

David: The balance sheet of Ingka. Ingka has $25 billion in cash on hand.
大卫：英卡公司的资产负债表。英卡公司手头有 250 亿美元现金。

Ben: Cash is not the constraint here.
本：现金不是制约因素。

David: No, and that cash again is at Ingka, totally separate from that (call it) $50–$100 billion of cash and securities. We can estimate that is over at Inter. Anyway, one way to think about this company is basically like the Berkshire Hathaway of Europe.
大卫：不，这些现金也在英卡，与 500 亿至 1,000 亿美元的现金和证券完全分开。我们可以估计那是在英特公司。总之，考虑这家公司的一种方法是，它基本上就像欧洲的伯克希尔-哈撒韦公司。

Ben: Yeah, if you wanted to sum some things together and just pick some mid points. Let’s say you got $75 billion for the enterprise value, the whole kit and caboodle, then you’ve got another $25 billion on the balance sheet, call it $100 billion for the IKEA business.
本：是的，如果你想把一些事情归纳起来，选择一些中间点。比方说，你有 750 亿美元的企业价值，整套东西，然后你在资产负债表上还有 250 亿美元，宜家的业务价值就是 1000 亿美元。

Then let’s say another $75 billion for the Inter IKEA Foundation’s cash pile. That’s $175 billion. Then the question is what is the cash size of the endowment that the Stichting Ingka Foundation has? I’m going to guess it’s smaller, $10-ish billion, but we’re still approaching $200 billion here in value, all created with no equity investment.
再假设宜家基金会的现金堆里还有 750 亿美元。这就是 1,750 亿美元。那么问题来了，Stichting Ingka 基金会的捐赠现金规模有多大？我猜会少一些，大约 100 亿美元，但我们这里的价值仍接近 2000 亿美元，而且都是在没有股权投资的情况下创造的。

David: No debt investment.
大卫：没有债务投资。

Ben: This is just 81 years of selling things, that provide value to customers, and reinvesting the dollars to do that again on a grander scale.
本：81 年来，我们一直在销售能为客户带来价值的产品，并将资金重新投入到更大的规模上。

David: I truly don’t think there is anything like this in the entire world.
大卫：我真的觉得全世界都没有这样的东西。

Ben: I wonder if that’s true that this is the only business like that, and if we define it as a $200 billion scale built from nothing with no investment, exclusively investing the cash flows of the business for growth. There has been no inorganic growth. No material inorganic growth.
本：我想知道这是否是唯一一家这样的企业，如果我们把它定义为白手起家、没有任何投资、只用企业的现金流投资来实现增长的 2,000 亿美元规模的企业。没有无机增长。没有实质性的无机增长。

With Berkshire, they traded a paperclip for a house many times. With LVMH, they did the same thing. He had three years where he turned some small amount of money into $600 million to get the whole thing started if I’m remembering our LVMH episode correctly.
在伯克希尔公司，他们多次用回形针换来一栋房子。在 LVMH，他们也做了同样的事情。如果我没记错的话，他曾在三年时间里把一些小钱变成了 6 亿美元，从而启动了整个公司。

David: Yeah, but LVMH, certainly capital both from Bernard and the family and other sources went into the business. Berkshire, maybe you could make more of an argument it was trading paperclips, but either way it was all inorganic growth.
戴维：是的，但 LVMH 的资金肯定来自伯纳德和家族以及其他来源。伯克希尔，也许你可以说它是回形针交易，但无论如何，它都是无机增长。

Ben: Hermes is pretty good. I mean it’s been around twice as long.
本：爱马仕很不错。我的意思是，它的历史是爱马仕的两倍。

David: That’s a good point. Doesn’t have as much cash, is worth the same or maybe arguably more, but doesn’t have the ludicrous cash pile that IKEA has.
大卫：说得好。宜家没有那么多现金，价值与宜家相同，甚至可以说更高，但没有宜家那么多现金。

Ben: Meta didn’t use much of their cash, otherwise you could say Meta is this example. But they have a lot of other. Mark is not the only shareholder the way that Ingvar was.
本：Meta 并没有动用太多现金，否则你可以说 Meta 就是这个例子。但他们还有很多其他股东。马克不像英瓦尔那样是唯一的股东。

David: And it took venture capital to build that business and debt capital as we talked about.
戴维：正如我们所说的那样，我们需要风险资本和债务资本来建立业务。

Ben: That to me is the most impressive thing about this whole business, is that it was just one foot in front of another. Take your money, keep plowing it into the next thing.
本：对我来说，这就是整个事业最令人印象深刻的地方，因为它只是一前一后。拿着你的钱，继续投入下一件事。

More stats on the business today. They have 216,000 employees, they call them coworkers. It’s a slight decrease year over year from last year. IKEA is in 63 markets worldwide. Last year they welcomed 860 million people to the store.
今天有更多关于企业的统计数据。他们有 21.6 万名员工，他们称之为同事。与去年同比略有减少。宜家在全球有 63 个市场。去年，宜家共接待了8.6亿人次。

Sometimes they say store visits, sometimes they say visitors. I don’t know if it’s 860 million unique people or 860 million times a person walked into the door, but whatever. Either way it’s crazy.
有时他们说是商店访问量，有时他们说是游客量。我不知道是 8.6 亿人次还是 8.6 亿人次，但不管怎样。不管怎样，这都太疯狂了。

The demographic of their customer base is 20–36. There is an age where you churn out of IKEA, and they know this. This is measured in a bunch of external surveys.
他们的顾客群在 20-36 岁之间。宜家知道顾客的年龄。这一点可以通过大量外部调查来衡量。

David: I’m surprised to hear you talking about how you’re doing so much active buying right now. Perhaps because you have your first child.
大卫：我很惊讶地听到你谈到你现在正在积极购买。也许是因为你有了第一个孩子。

Ben: Nursery.
本：托儿所。

David: I’ve totally aged out. As much as I love IKEA—it’s been such a huge part of my life for a long time—now that we’re onto kid number two, we’re reusing a lot of stuff. I don’t actually buy from there that much anymore.
大卫：我已经完全老了。虽然我很喜欢宜家--它一直是我生活的重要组成部分--但现在我们有了第二个孩子，我们会重复使用很多东西。实际上，我已经很少从宜家买东西了。

Ben: There’s a great study that Earnest did that we’ll link to in the show notes, that shows IKEA’s peak customer age is 24. They start churning after that. It’s interesting to see the distribution like Crate & Barrel’s peak age is 31, West Elm is 33, Williams Sonoma is 33. Then you start to get into Restoration Hardware is 44, Pier 1 Imports is 45, Home Depot is 48, Lowe’s is 54. This is like the cycle of life.
本：Earnest 做了一项很好的研究，我们会在节目注释中链接到这项研究，研究表明宜家的顾客高峰年龄是 24 岁。过了这个年龄，他们就开始流失了。Crate & Barrel 的高峰年龄是 31 岁，West Elm 是 33 岁，Williams Sonoma 是 33 岁。然后开始进入 Restoration Hardware 是 44 岁，Pier 1 Imports 是 45 岁，Home Depot 是 48 岁，Lowe's 是 54 岁。这就像生命的轮回。

David: I love it. You go from the IKEA semi self-construction or believe self-construction, to then the I’m just buying consumer furniture, to then no, I’m actually building this stuff myself.
大卫：我喜欢。你从宜家的半自建式或相信自建式，到我只是在购买消费者家具，再到不，我实际上是在自己建造这些东西。

Ben: Exactly. Well you go from furnishing your apartment to furnishing your home to fixing your home.
本：没错。你从装修公寓到装修房屋，再到修缮房屋。

David: That sounds right.
戴维：听起来没错。

Ben: Geography, Europe is still their core. 71% of sales even still come from Europe, even with the US is a huge and developed market.
本：地理上，欧洲仍然是他们的核心。尽管美国是一个巨大而发达的市场，但 71% 的销售额仍然来自欧洲。

David: And Germany is still bigger than the US, I think.
大卫：我认为，德国仍然比美国大。

Ben: 71% is products in stores, 26% is e-commerce, 3% is services to customers. I assume that basically means TaskRabbit.
本：71% 是商店里的产品，26% 是电子商务，3% 是为客户提供的服务。我想这基本上就是指 TaskRabbit。

David: I assume so, yup.
大卫：我想是的。

Ben: The majority of the revenue is still product sold in stores. Growth is pretty slow, 5% or so. Not so different from Walmart. I decided I wanted to do a sales per foot analysis the same way that we did in our Costco episode.
本：大部分收入仍来自商店销售的产品。增长相当缓慢，5% 左右。和沃尔玛没什么区别。我决定用分析 Costco 的方法，对每英尺销售额进行分析。

It’s a private company. They don’t break it out and they’re limited in what they have to report to you. But if you assume all their revenue is spread over their 473 stores and you estimate it’s about 300,000 square foot per store, that gives you €320 a foot, which is like, I don’t know, $350 a foot or something like that.
这是一家私营公司。他们不会把收入细分出来，向你汇报的内容也有限。但如果假设他们的所有收入都分摊到 473 家店铺中，每家店铺的面积约为 30 万平方英尺，那么每平方英尺就是 3200 欧元，我不知道是 350 美元还是类似的数字。

Restoration Hardware is $900, Williams Sonoma is $1300. But if you’ve ever been at a Williams Sonoma store, that makes sense. It’s overpriced and it’s very small.
Restoration Hardware 售价 900 美元，Williams Sonoma 售价 1300 美元。但如果你去过 Williams Sonoma 的店，你就会明白了。它的价格太高，而且店面很小。

David: These are also small stores too. Well, Restoration Hardware is huge complexes but few of them.
大卫：这些也都是小店。Restoration Hardware 是大型综合商店，但数量很少。

Ben: And they’re these weird palaces. It’s a crazy business.
本：它们都是些奇怪的宫殿。这是个疯狂的行业

David: Have you been to the one in San Francisco?
大卫：你去过旧金山的那一家吗？

Ben: No.

David: It’s freaking wild. You would think it’s a tech company headquarters. But no, it’s the Restoration Hardware building.
大卫：太疯狂了。你会以为这是科技公司的总部。但不是，这是修复硬件大楼。

Ben: Really? They’ve been on quite the transformation going up market over the last couple of decades. La-Z-Boy is $157 a foot. None of this is on a spectrum of bad to good because IKEA is intentionally not trying to maximize their dollar per foot here. There are trade-offs they’re willing to make instead of maximizing that.
本：真的吗？在过去的几十年里，它们的价格一直在不断上涨。La-Z-Boy 每英尺 157 美元。这一切都没有好坏之分，因为宜家有意不追求每平方英尺价值的最大化。他们愿意做出一些权衡，而不是最大化。

Now let’s compare it to the companies we mentioned on our Costco episode. Costco is $1800 a foot. They are trying to maximize their dollar per foot. Walmart is about $600, Target is about $450, then these crazy businesses, just to compare it to the all-time greatest, Tiffany is $3000 a foot for jewelry, and Apple is $5500, a much smaller footprint.
现在，让我们把它与我们在 Costco 节目中提到的公司进行比较。好市多的价格是 1800 美元一英尺。他们试图最大限度地提高每英尺的价格。沃尔玛约为 600 美元，塔吉特约为 450 美元，然后是这些疯狂的企业，与历史上最伟大的企业相比，蒂芙尼的珠宝店每英尺 3000 美元，苹果公司每英尺 5500 美元，占地面积要小得多。

David: I should remember this from our Hermes episode. Do they report sales per square foot?
大卫：我应该还记得爱马仕的这期节目。他们会报告每平方英尺的销售额吗？

Ben: I don’t remember. I don’t think we talked about it.
本：我不记得了。我想我们没谈过这个。

David: I don’t think we talked about it either.
大卫：我觉得我们也没谈过这个问题。

Ben: It doesn’t feel like a thing they would report.
本：感觉不像是他们会报告的事情。

David: But I got to imagine, though, that it is as high if not higher than Apple.
戴维：但我可以想象，如果不比苹果公司高，也会和苹果公司一样高。

Ben: You think it’s higher than Tiffany?
本：你觉得比蒂凡尼还高？

David: Yeah.
大卫：是的。

Ben: You might be right.
本：你可能是对的。

David: We’ve spent a lot of time in Hermes stores recently.
大卫：我们最近在爱马仕店里待了很久。

Ben: We have, yeah.
本：我们有，是的。

David: Can attest to some of the behavior that we have observed in there.
大卫：可以证明我们在那里观察到的一些行为。

Ben: You’re raising their price per foot.
本：你提高了他们每英尺的价格。

David: No, I think I’m lowering their price per foot.
大卫：不，我想我是在降低他们每英尺的价格。

Ben: It’s interesting. I don’t really know how to think about this $350 number. They have a huge amount of square footage. They intentionally try to sell things as inexpensively as possible. The ultimate maximization function is almost like it’s not margin dollars. I think it’s number of items sold profitably at all. They want to sell more things to more people.
本：这很有趣。我真不知道该如何看待这个 350 美元的数字。他们的面积很大。他们有意尽可能低价出售商品。最终的最大化功能几乎不是利润率。我认为它是出售的商品数量，并从中获利。他们想把更多的东西卖给更多的人。

David: I think it comes back to this concept of the many, which again maybe is a little hokey, but I actually think it is true.
大卫：我认为这又回到了 "多 "的概念上，也许这个概念有点虚假，但我认为它确实是真的。

Ben: They’ve built a $100 billion business on the idea of the many. It’s not hokey at all.
本：他们靠 "众人拾柴火焰高 "的理念建立了价值 1000 亿美元的企业。这一点也不虚伪。

David: It is the many that is the optimization. I think you’re totally right. I don’t think they’re trying to optimize sales per square foot at all. I think it’s just the square feet are all in function of the many. And they own all the real estate. It’s not like they’re paying rent. They choose the location strategically, and then they become a landlord to other people in these new MEGA shopping centers.
大卫："多 "才是优化。我觉得你说得完全正确。我认为他们根本没有试图优化每平方英尺的销售额。我认为这只是平方英尺对多的作用。他们拥有所有的房地产。他们又不是在付租金。他们战略性地选择地点，然后在这些新的巨型购物中心成为其他人的房东。

Ben: Their optimization function is they want to provide as much value to as many people in the world as possible.
本：他们的优化功能是希望为世界上尽可能多的人提供尽可能多的价值。

David: Here’s another reason why this metric doesn’t make any sense at all for IKEA. With the exception of Costco, which is its own thing, none of those other businesses also have their warehouses in their stores.
大卫：还有一个原因，说明这个指标对宜家没有任何意义。除了自成一体的好市多（Costco）之外，其他企业的仓库都不在商场内。

Ben: Then the last thing in the snapshot of the business today is the market. Today in 2024 with $47 billion in revenue, IKEA holds only a 5.7% market share. This is an astonishingly fragmented market. It was when Ingvar started the company and it is today still.
本：那么，宜家今天的业务快照中的最后一件事就是市场。到 2024 年，宜家家居的收入将达到 470 亿美元，但市场份额仅为 5.7%。这个市场的分散程度令人吃惊。英格瓦创办公司时是这样，今天依然如此。

David: Which is so wild and they are by far the largest player.
大卫：这太疯狂了，他们是迄今为止最大的玩家。

Ben: Even if you look around, where else do people get furniture that gets the job done, looks good enough and is a good value to them? Target, Amazon, Wayfair. But then you start to get quickly into more expensive—CB2, Pottery Barn. I get Walmart sells furniture, but.
本：即使你环顾四周，人们还能从哪里买到既能完成任务、又足够美观、物美价廉的家具呢？塔吉特、亚马逊、Wayfair。但很快你就会买到更贵的--CB2、Pottery Barn。我知道沃尔玛也卖家具，但是。

David: Oh yeah. I’ve been chomping at the bit all episode to talk about this. This is the craziest thing to me about this whole story. IKEA has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that furniture and home furnishings is an extremely large, extremely global, very attractive market. One.
大卫：哦，是的。我一整集都在唠叨这件事。对我来说，这是整个故事中最疯狂的事情。宜家毫无疑问地证明，家具和家居用品是一个极其庞大、极其全球化、极具吸引力的市场。一个

Two, IKEA and a whole set of other retail companies—Costco probably being foremost among them—have also shown that becoming a scale global player in a consumer market is a good position to be in. IKEA has no competitors in the Venn diagram of those two things. They are the only globally-scaled furniture and home furnishings company. That’s crazy.
其次，宜家家居和其他一系列零售公司--Costco 可能是其中的佼佼者--也表明，在消费市场上成为一个有规模的全球参与者是一个很好的定位。在这两点的维恩图中，宜家没有竞争对手。他们是唯一一家全球规模的家具和家居用品公司。这太疯狂了。

Ben: Yeah. Okay, I’m foreshadowing power. As we move into analysis here—power is going to be our next thing we examine—just to name it, this company is scale economies.
是啊好吧，我在预示权力。当我们在这里进行分析时--权力将是我们下一个要研究的东西--就说它吧，这家公司是规模经济。

Now that they have reached escape velocity, like they’re through the take-off phase in Hamilton’s parlance, you can’t compete directly with them because there’s no chance that you could beat them on price or on quality for price. It’s almost like if there was going to be an IKEA competitor, they would’ve needed to start 50–80 years ago. A direct IKEA competitor. The most credible way to compete with them is doing something different.
现在，他们已经达到了逃逸速度，用汉密尔顿的话说，就像进入了起飞阶段，你无法与他们直接竞争，因为你不可能在价格或质量上击败他们。这就好比，要想成为宜家家居的竞争对手，他们早在 50-80 年前就该开始了。宜家的直接竞争对手。要与宜家竞争，最可靠的办法就是做一些与众不同的事情。

Probably the best competitive strategy is Wayfair, something that’s born on the Internet, that does something with a completely different cost structure than they’re capable of. Wayfair is not a high-margin business, but they have built the whole business around the idea that they sell online, whereas IKEA needs to figure out how to do that.
最好的竞争策略可能是 Wayfair，它诞生于互联网，其成本结构与宜家完全不同。Wayfair 的利润率并不高，但他们围绕着网上销售的理念建立了整个业务，而宜家则需要想办法做到这一点。

David: Which, as we’ve talked about, e-commerce is a challenge for IKEA. If you make it your strength, yes. But you really got to squint today to see Wayfair becoming a global business on the scale of IKEA.
大卫：正如我们所说，电子商务对宜家来说是一个挑战。如果你把它作为你的强项，是的。但今天，你必须眯起眼睛，才能看到 Wayfair 成为像宜家那样规模的全球企业。

Ben: Wayfair’s a $5 billion market cap company.
本：Wayfair 是一家市值 50 亿美元的公司。

David: A long way to go. Now it’s interesting as I was saying that part of me is I’m thinking like, that’s so crazy. But you’re right. Let’s think through how would you actually compete with IKEA if you wanted to build a globally scaled furniture brand?
大卫：还有很长的路要走。有趣的是，当我说到这里时，我在想，这太疯狂了。但你是对的。让我们想一想，如果你想建立一个全球规模的家具品牌，你将如何与宜家竞争？

Well, an obvious one that pops out to me is, okay, give the low- and low-medium–ends to IKEA and then compete at the top-end like Restoration Hardware is doing. The issue with that though, about going global is that tastes at the high end are way more heterogeneous and fragmented, especially across geography, than they are at the middle and low ends.
我想到的一个显而易见的办法是，把低端和中低端产品交给宜家，然后像 Restoration Hardware 一样在高端产品上展开竞争。但这样做的问题是，与中低端产品相比，高端产品的品位更加异质和分散，尤其是在不同地域。

Ben: That’s a great point. You can’t have a narrow product range. You have a more expensive overhead in producing a wide variety of SKUs.
本：这是一个很好的观点。产品范围不能太窄。生产种类繁多的 SKU 需要更高的开销。

Probably the most credible competitor from my perspective with me as a customer is Target. I probably would look at target.com and see if there are, because they partner with all these designers. They have a reasonable sense of taste. It’s not high-end furniture and never will be, and it’s not the best designs, but it’s like, okay, this is going to get the job done for a commodity thing in my house.
从我作为顾客的角度来看，最可信的竞争对手可能是 Target。我可能会去 target.com 看看有没有，因为他们与所有这些设计师都有合作。他们有合理的品味。这不是高端家具，也永远不会是，也不是最好的设计，但它就像，好吧，这是要完成的工作，在我的房子里的商品的事情。

They don’t just sell furniture, but Target’s a $70 billion company. I don’t think it’s global in the way that IKEA is. Again, to your point, it’s competing on just furniture and competing at global scale. That’s a tough nut to crack.
塔吉特不仅卖家具，还是一家市值 700 亿美元的公司。我不认为它像宜家那样是全球性的。还是你的观点，它只在家具上竞争，而且是在全球范围内竞争。这是一个很难解决的问题。

David: I totally agree with you that within the US or in North America, Target feels like the closest competitor to IKEA. However, exactly that. Target is a North American company. It is not a global company.
大卫：我完全同意你的观点，在美国或北美，塔吉特给人的感觉是与宜家家居最接近的竞争对手。然而，正是如此。塔吉特是一家北美公司。它不是一家全球性公司。

Ben: We’re pretty squarely in power here. Normally when we try to assess power we say, what is it that enables the business to achieve persistent differential returns, or put another way be more profitable than their closest competitor, and do so sustainably. We’re asking a slightly different question here, which is what enables this business to own this market?
本：我们现在正处于实力阶段。通常，当我们试图评估实力时，我们会说，是什么让企业能够实现持续的差异化回报，或者换一种说法，比最接近的竞争对手更有利可图，并可持续地做到这一点。在这里，我们提出了一个略有不同的问题，那就是，是什么让这家企业能够拥有这个市场？

David: To almost uniquely exist.
大卫：几乎是独一无二的存在。

Ben: Yeah, when no one else is really competing with them directly or at least competing with them across everything they do.
本：是的，当没有人真正与他们直接竞争，或者至少在他们所做的所有事情上都与他们竞争时。

David: I’m trying to think if we’ve encountered a business like this before.
大卫：我在想我们以前是否遇到过这样的企业。

Ben: You would have to counter position them because no one else can outscale economies them. Maybe Amazon would be the most credible because they have the scale if they were to make a real run at it. I assume there’s an Amazon Basics line of furniture.
本：你必须对它们进行反定位，因为没有人能在经济上超越它们。也许亚马逊是最可信的，因为他们有足够的规模，如果他们真的要做的话。我想亚马逊应该有 "亚马逊基础 "系列家具吧。

David: Yup, Amazon definitely has furniture.
大卫：是的，亚马逊肯定有家具。

Ben: There’s not switching costs from a customer perspective.
本：从客户角度看，没有转换成本。

David: It’s funny. I’m thinking through that now. Yes, Amazon definitely has furniture. Amazon is more or less global, more so every day. But there’s a supply side scale economies moat here for IKEA, which is if you’re Amazon, even if you’re just a retailer, you’re not designing or sourcing any of this furniture yourself, how on earth are you going to do the logistics around the world in the way that IKEA does?
大卫：这很有趣。我现在就在想这个问题。是的，亚马逊肯定有家具。亚马逊的业务或多或少是全球性的，而且与日俱增。但对宜家来说，这里有一个供应方规模经济的护城河，那就是如果你是亚马逊，哪怕你只是一个零售商，你没有自己设计或采购任何家具，你究竟如何像宜家那样在全球范围内开展物流？

Ben: Not to mention, at this point, IKEA, I think 10% of their furniture is actually made in-house at IKEA. They own their own manufacturer.
本：更不用说，在这一点上，宜家，我想他们 10% 的家具实际上都是宜家内部制造的。他们拥有自己的制造商。

David: Specifically they own their own manufacturing for their highest volume and most strategic products, for the hotdog products.
大卫：具体来说，他们拥有自己的生产基地，生产销量最大、最具战略意义的产品，如热狗产品。

Ben: Normally when we do a power analysis, we’re looking at the competitors.
本：通常情况下，当我们进行功率分析时，我们会关注竞争对手。

David: There’s nobody to look at here.
大卫：这里没人看。

Ben: I guess we should assess it versus Target in North America.
本：我想我们应该将其与北美的 Target 进行对比评估。

David: I think it really is just local competitors in any given market.
戴维：我认为在任何特定市场，真正的竞争者都是当地的竞争者。

Ben: They’re not in the same segment as William Sonoma or Restoration Hardware, any of these other furniture companies.
本：他们和威廉-索诺玛（William Sonoma）、Restoration Hardware 以及其他家具公司不在一个细分市场。

David: Who, by the way, also are not global.
大卫：顺便说一句，他们也不是全球性的。

Ben: Ultimately it’s scale economies. Everything about this is the same scale economies as Costco. They take every dollar that they’re not shipping up to one of the two foundations, they’re not using to try to figure out e-commerce, and they try to deploy it in how do we further increase our fixed cost base to reduce variable costs. What are the ways in which we can design it better, or manufacture it better, or invest in another factory, or something to reduce the price for customers over time.
本：归根结底是规模经济。这和好市多的规模经济是一样的。他们把没有运往两个基金会之一的每一美元，没有用于尝试电子商务的每一美元，都用于如何进一步提高我们的固定成本基础，以降低可变成本。有什么方法可以让我们设计得更好，或制造得更好，或投资另一个工厂，或随着时间的推移为客户降低价格。

David: I think that really is the only one that matters. I was tempted to say, oh, brand’s important here too. Yeah, the IKEA brand. Great. But compared to scale economies.
大卫：我认为这是唯一重要的。我很想说，哦，品牌在这里也很重要。对，宜家的品牌。很好。但与规模经济相比

Ben: Well and the definition of branding is that you’re willing to pay more for it because it’s from that brand.
本：嗯，品牌的定义是，你愿意为它支付更高的价格，因为它来自于那个品牌。

David: The definition of the IKEA brand is you’re paying less.
大卫："宜家 "品牌的定义就是让你花更少的钱。

Ben: It’s scale economies. It should be cheaper every time because of scale economies.
本：是规模经济。因为规模经济，每次都应该更便宜。

David: That’s it.
大卫：就是这样。

Ben: And the interesting thing is cash really isn’t the constraint. This is a lot like the big tech company. It’s like what we were talking about with Meta. They have way more cash than they could ever strategically deploy.
本：有趣的是，现金并不是制约因素。这很像大型科技公司。就像我们刚才谈到的 Meta。他们拥有的现金远远超过他们的战略部署。

The way for them to obtain more power is just grow even more. But they’re already using their cash maximally to the extent that they can grow without ruining some part of the business. So time is their constraint because time needs to march on in order for them to grow at whatever the rate they feel they can optimally.
他们获得更多权力的方法就是进一步发展。但是，他们已经在最大限度地使用现金，在不毁坏部分业务的情况下实现增长。因此，时间是他们的制约因素，因为时间需要他们以他们认为最佳的速度增长。

David: Which also comes back to their wackadoo crazy structure that Ingvar set up.
大卫：这又回到了英格瓦建立的古怪疯狂的结构。

Ben: To make it as durable as possible.
本：使其尽可能耐用。

David: There’s a method to his madness here. Time is arguably the thing that the company is most optimized for.
大卫：他的疯狂是有道理的。时间可以说是公司最需要优化的东西。

Ben: So one question I have for you before we move to playbook is, what is IKEA? Is it primarily a store like a retailer or a merchant, or is it a furniture brand that happens to have vertically-integrated stores?
本：在我们开始讨论游戏规则之前，我想问你一个问题，什么是宜家？它主要是一个像零售商或商人一样的商店，还是一个碰巧拥有垂直整合商店的家具品牌？

I always thought about it as like, oh, it’s kind of Costco-esque because they’re in locations like Costco, and in some ways their business model, their obsession with thin margins, and serving many people in high volume is Costco-esque, but they’re not a merchant, really.
我一直认为，这有点像好市多，因为他们的经营场所就像好市多，在某些方面，他们的商业模式、他们对薄利多销的执着以及为许多人提供大批量服务都是好市多的风格，但他们并不是真正的商人。

David: I think they’re a merchant at heart. Ingvar was a merchant at heart in the same way that Sam Walton, Jim Sinegal, Sol Price, and Jeff Bezos were and are. It’s the whole P.T. Barnum aspect that we were talking about with the early days. It’s the showroom.
大卫：我认为他们骨子里都是商人。英格瓦本质上是个商人，就像山姆-沃尔顿、吉姆-西内加尔、索-普莱斯和杰夫-贝佐斯过去和现在都是一样。这就是我们在早期谈到的 P.T. Barnum 的整个方面。这是陈列室。

Ben: Shop the competition, incorporate their best ideas.
本：去竞争对手那里购物，吸收他们最好的想法。

David: That was the ethos. I think also that’s where this focus on value for the many. It is a very merchant retaily–type idea.
戴维：这就是我们的精神。我认为，这也是注重为大众创造价值的原因所在。这是一个非常类似于零售商的想法。

Ben: You’re right. But the way that it actually manifests is this vertically-integrated furniture and homewares brand that happens to have a really great experience for you to go and buy their products.
本：你说得对。但它的实际表现形式是，这个垂直整合的家具和家居用品品牌，恰好为你提供了非常棒的体验，让你去购买他们的产品。

David: Which is funny. Most merchants that are vertically integrated are focused on higher margins. They are not.
大卫：这很有趣。大多数垂直整合的商家都注重高利润。其实不然。

Ben: That’s an interesting point. Like Apple. This is the way in which IKEA is a lot like Apple. An Apple store sells Apple products and a few other things. An IKEA store sells IKEA products and a few other things. But IKEA is focused on minimizing margins and Apple is focused on maximizing margins. Super interesting.
本：这是一个有趣的观点。就像苹果公司一样。这就是宜家与苹果的相似之处。苹果商店出售苹果产品和其他一些东西。宜家家居店销售宜家家居产品和其他一些东西。但宜家专注于利润最小化，而苹果专注于利润最大化。超级有趣。

Okay, playbook. We’ve talked about some of this already, but just to underscore, this crazy corporate structure basically only helps them. When I was first digging into it, I was like, oh, this is going to have lots of trade-offs and pros and cons.
好吧，剧本。我们已经讨论过其中的一些内容，但要强调的是，这种疯狂的公司结构基本上只会帮助他们。当我第一次深入研究时，我就想，哦，这会有很多权衡和利弊。

In the way that it helps them, it minimizes taxes, protects them from takeovers, ensures their durability. They have the benefits of being a non-profit corporation. There are no shareholders to appease, which enables longer term thinking. They’re protected from transitions of government power—the tax savings, the European Parliament, Green Party, estimated that they saved $1 billion in taxes between 2009 and 2014 alone. There are these benefits,
这样做可以帮助它们最大限度地减少税收，保护它们不被收购，确保其持久性。作为一家非营利性公司，它们有很多好处。它们没有股东需要安抚，因此可以有更长远的考虑。欧洲议会绿党估计，仅在 2009 年至 2014 年间，它们就节省了 10 亿美元的税收。还有这些好处、

David: Not to mention it neutralized what probably was realistically the biggest risk to the business, which was now or future family squabbles in generations to come. That’s just off the table.
戴维：更不用说，它还化解了企业可能面临的最大现实风险，即现在或未来几代人的家族争斗。这些都不用考虑了。

Ben: Absolutely. The only way in which it hurts them is access to capital, but they don’t need money. Can you come up with another way that the corporate structure is a con? I mean it’s a con for society, I guess. It deprives people from the tax dollars that they would’ve to pay otherwise.
本：当然。对他们造成伤害的唯一途径是获得资金，但他们并不需要钱。你能从另一个角度说明公司结构是个骗局吗？我是说对社会来说是个骗局吧。它剥夺了人们本该缴纳的税款。

David: Or the participation as an index fund holder or equity holder in the building of this business.
大卫：或者作为指数基金持有人或股权持有人参与这项业务的建设。

Ben: Oh, that’s true.
本：哦，没错。

David: That’s where my mind was going of, well, maybe there’s some reputational hit to the company by having this crazy structure. For a long time, people believed it was a tax dodge, which it may also be, but at the end of the day with IKEA’s customer, it doesn’t matter. Nobody knows or cares about that.
大卫：我也是这么想的，也许这种疯狂的结构会对公司的声誉造成一定的影响。很长时间以来，人们都认为这是一种避税行为，也许确实如此，但对于宜家的客户来说，这并不重要。没有人知道或关心这个问题。

Ben: It’s true. Imagine they’re 10 times more successful and they are worth $1 trillion. Well that’s a real shame that the public is deprived from being an owner of all that value creation. Fascinating.
本：这是真的。想象一下，他们比现在成功 10 倍，身价达到 1 万亿美元。那么，公众被剥夺了成为所有这些价值创造的所有者的权利，实在是太可惜了。真有意思

The other big playbook theme here is all of this is basically only possible because Ingvar built a business by reinvesting solely the business’s own cash flows. All this other stuff does rely on that.
这本书的另一大主题是，所有这一切之所以成为可能，基本上都是因为英格瓦通过完全利用企业自身的现金流进行再投资而建立起的企业。所有这些都有赖于此。

David: If there had been external capital and thus de facto external stakeholders, even if it was debt capital along the way, it’s hard to imagine history playing out like this.
戴维：如果有外部资本，从而有事实上的外部利益相关者，即使一路上都是债务资本，也很难想象历史会这样发展。

Ben: Costco managed to make it work even though they raised a bunch of money.
本：好市多虽然筹集了一大笔钱，但还是成功了。

David: But they’re not structured like this.
大卫：但它们的结构不是这样的。

Ben: But they can make a lot of the same long-term thinking decisions. In fact, Costco even runs on thinner margins. IKEA’s gross margins are mid-30% and Costco’s are 13%.
本：但他们也可以做出很多具有长远考虑的决定。事实上，好市多的利润率更低。宜家的毛利率在 30% 左右，好市多只有 13%。

There’s definitely this thing that we’ve talked about a few times, frugality as an edge. They originally built in the potato fields as a way to save money, but it ended up creating and inspiring their business model that they need to create this destination experience.
我们已经讨论过几次，节俭是一种优势。他们最初在马铃薯田里建房是为了省钱，但这最终创造并激发了他们的商业模式，即他们需要创造这种目的地体验。

The culture of frugality is interesting. Trying to buy materials at a discount, minimal sales staff, no finishes on unseen services, flat-packing, no one has assistance, I think actually the CEO is the only person at the company with an assistant, no one flies first class, they print on both sides of the paper.
节俭文化很有意思。想方设法以折扣价购买材料，销售人员少之又少，看不见的服务不做任何装饰，扁平包装，没有人有助理，我想实际上首席执行官是公司里唯一有助理的人，没有人坐头等舱，他们用纸的两面打印。

David: The assistant thing, the CEO may have an administrative assistant these days, but for years Ingvar had an assistant. But it wasn’t an assistant like an administrative assistant. It was like his chief-of-staff, like COO.
大卫：关于助理的问题，现在的首席执行官可能会有一个行政助理，但多年来英格瓦一直有一个助理。但他的助理不像行政助理。那是他的参谋长，就像首席运营官。

Ben: Didn’t he become CEO after?
本：他后来不是成了首席执行官吗？

David: Exactly.
大卫：没错。

Ben: But it does actually beg this frugality as an edge, but could they run leaner? Why is it that Costco can have 13% gross margins, but IKEA marks their goods up more. Is IKEA bloated? Is the fixed cost of running the business, has it just gotten high to the point where you need high gross margins in order to pay for all that overhead?
本：但实际上，宜家确实把节俭作为一种优势，但他们能不能做得更精益一些？为什么好市多可以有 13% 的毛利率，而宜家却要在商品上做更多的标记？宜家是否过于臃肿？经营业务的固定成本是否已经高到需要高毛利率来支付所有开销的地步？

David: I think there’s an explanation here, which is that Costco—let’s put Kirkland aside—is selling other company’s products. Therefore, at least with the non-Kirkland products, Costco can take a lower margin because they’re reselling those products.
大卫：我认为这里有一个解释，那就是好市多--让我们把柯克兰放在一边--销售的是其他公司的产品。因此，至少对于非柯克兰的产品，好市多可以获得较低的利润率，因为他们是在转售这些产品。

Ben: They don’t have to develop them.
本：他们不需要开发。

David: Whereas IKEA is designing, developing, producing.
大卫：而宜家是设计、开发和生产。

Ben: So they should have a lot higher overhead, they should have a lot higher fixed cost base.
本：所以他们的管理费用应该高得多，固定成本基数应该高得多。

David: Exactly.
大卫：没错。

Ben: Still feels like a big gap.
本：还是感觉差距很大。

David: Whereas in Costco, there’s actually—again, Kirkland aside—third-party products in Costco, there are two margins happening. There’s Costco’s gross margin, but then there’s also the supplier’s gross margin.
大卫：而在好市多，实际上--还是那句话，除了柯克兰--好市多的第三方产品，还有两种利润率。有好市多的毛利，也有供应商的毛利。

Ben: That’s the right way to think about it. We’re looking at the sum of two margins when we’re comparing…
本：这样想就对了。我们在比较两个利润率的总和时......

David: IKEA and Costco.
大卫：宜家和好市多。

Ben: You’re right. Fair. This is a funny one. They lean into Sweden.
Ben: You're right.Fair.这是一个有趣的。他们靠向瑞典

David: Super hard.
大卫：超级难。

Ben: Most companies that go international try to embrace the local market and let their origin fade into the background. But that’s just the opposite of the strategy that IKEA runs. In the meatballs, there’s this little Swedish flag that sticks out of the top of them. Every time you buy them, you walk into the store and it says, Hej!
本：大多数走向国际化的公司都试图拥抱当地市场，让自己的原产地逐渐淡出。但宜家的策略恰恰相反。在肉丸的顶部，有一面小小的瑞典国旗。每次你买的时候，走进店里，就会看到上面写着：Hej！

David: Which is so funny. IKEA has become the greatest Swedish ambassador.
大卫：这太有趣了。宜家已经成为瑞典最伟大的形象大使。

Ben: So true. David, you’re going to love this because it’s from the complete other side of the spectrum. Here’s what IKEA does. They sell a sense of place.
本：太对了。大卫，你一定会喜欢这个的，因为它来自完全不同的另一面。宜家是这样做的。他们卖的是场所感。

David: Oh wow. Hermes and IKEA separated at birth. There we go. For
大卫：哇哦。爱马仕和宜家一出生就分开了。这就对了。对于

Ben: Listeners that haven’t listened to LVMH and Hermes episodes, this borrows from the luxury playbook. Luxury companies sell a sense of place and mark their goods up 10x–13x on the cost of materials for that sense of place. IKEA does the complete opposite.
本：没有听过路威酩轩集团和爱马仕集团节目的听众，这是在借鉴奢侈品的玩法。奢侈品公司销售的是一种场所感，并将其商品标价为这种场所感的材料成本的10-13倍。宜家的做法则完全相反。

David: Ben, you got a mic drop there. We should just end the season right there. It’s not going to get any better than that.
本，你话筒掉了。我们就在这里结束这一季吧没有比这更好的了

Ben: No, it is not.
本：不，不是这样的。

David: IKEA sells a sense of place. Amazing.
大卫：宜家卖的是地方感。太神奇了

Ben: I do have one more, which is not nearly as poetic, but I’ll just finish my section off. They have a very contrarian view on working capital. This didn’t really come up in the story because I couldn’t really find the right place for it, but most companies, common wisdom is you should keep your inventory low and you should minimize the amount of your capital that’s locked up in working capital.
本：我还有一个问题，虽然没有那么有诗意，但我还是要把我的部分讲完。他们对营运资金的看法很相反。故事中没有提到这一点，因为我实在找不到合适的地方，但大多数公司的普遍观点是，你应该保持低库存，你应该尽量减少锁定在营运资本中的资金量。

IKEA has a very different optimization function. Theirs is about cost for the end consumer and ensuring availability of products at all times to keep customer confidence high. They’re willing to do things like build up excess inventories during certain periods if it means getting a favorable rate from a manufacturer who might have extra capacity, as long as it means eventually their customers will save money when they do buy it.
宜家的优化功能则截然不同。他们关注的是最终消费者的成本，以及确保产品在任何时候的可用性，以保持顾客的高度信心。只要能让顾客在购买时省钱，他们就愿意做一些事情，比如在某些时期建立过剩的库存，只要这意味着能从可能有额外产能的制造商那里获得优惠的价格。

I think a huge part of this is the foundation ownership, and the other part of it is the scale and the timelessness of their product lines. They sell these things forever, so they know they’ll eventually sell through that inventory. If there’s a good price on it, yeah, give me 1000. Sure.
我认为，其中很大一部分原因在于基金会的所有权，另一部分原因在于其产品线的规模和永恒性。他们永远都在卖这些东西，所以他们知道最终会卖完这些库存。如果能卖个好价钱，给我一千块吧。当然可以

David: The BILLY bookcase is never going out of style.
大卫：BILLY 书柜永远不会过时。

Ben: Right. Honestly, if I describe a BILLY bookcase to you, there’s not a simpler way I could describe it. It is straight lines with no facade. The simplest bookcase that you could draw on a piece of paper, that’s the BILLY bookcase. That’s the LACK shelf. That’s the LACK table.
Ben: Right.老实说，如果我向你描述 BILLY 书柜，没有比这更简单的了。它是直线型的，没有立面。你可以在一张纸上画出最简单的书架，那就是 BILLY 书架。这就是 LACK 书架。这就是 LACK 桌子。

In their reporting, you dig into it, you see pretty high levels of working capital tied up, but they just don’t care. Capital is not a problem. They can’t deploy the capital that they have, so they may as well use it strategically.
在他们的报告中，你会看到相当高水平的周转资金被占用，但他们根本不在乎。资本不是问题。他们无法调配手中的资金，所以还不如战略性地使用资金。

The other benefit that dovetails out of this is they get to be really, really supplier-friendly. They can do things like net 30 terms when the rest of the industry is on net 60 or net 90 because they’re just not cash-constrained. they invest in the relationship with their manufacturers and that’s why they have, what is it now? 1600 suppliers, 55 countries, and the average supplier relationship is 11 years long.
与此相辅相成的另一个好处是，他们对供应商非常非常友好。他们可以做净额 30 这样的事情，而行业内的其他公司都是净额 60 或净额 90，因为他们没有现金约束。他们投资于与制造商的关系，这就是为什么他们现在有什么？1600 家供应商，分布在 55 个国家，平均供应商关系长达 11 年。

David: To pick up on that point, I was just thinking about what is my biggest complaint about IKEA? And as a customer over several decades of my life, when have I been most frustrated with the company? It’s when I go to the store and they don’t have what I want in stock.
大卫：接着这个问题，我在想我对宜家最大的不满是什么？几十年来，作为宜家的顾客，我什么时候对宜家最不满？那就是当我去商店买东西时，他们没有我想要的东西。

I’m sure they know this, too. That is my number one biggest complaint, biggest negative experience I would ever have as an IKEA customer. Yeah, tying up more working capital and inventory for the sake of the value to the customer, very worthwhile investment.
我相信他们也知道这一点。这是我最大的抱怨，也是我作为宜家顾客最大的负面体验。是啊，为了给顾客创造价值而占用更多的营运资金和库存，这是非常值得的投资。

One more I wanted to add on this same vein that similarly didn’t have the right place to put it in the story, is their supply chain and just how really, really smart and strategic.
我还想补充一点，那就是他们的供应链，以及他们是多么的聪明和具有战略眼光。

Ben: Didn’t you read the whole book? There were three or four books that we read. But you read a whole book on their supply chain.
本：你没有读完整本书吗？我们读了三四本书。但你读了一整本关于他们供应链的书。

David: Yes. There’s a book called Strategic Outsourcing and Category Management: Lessons Learned at IKEA by Magnus Carlsson. Magnus was a senior executive in IKEA supply chain for 25 years. This book is awesome. This is the luxury strategy for supply chain. I haven’t read that many supply chain business school textbooks.
大卫：是的。有一本书叫《战略外包与品类管理》：一书，作者是马格努斯-卡尔松（Magnus Carlsson）。马格努斯在宜家供应链担任高级主管长达 25 年。这本书非常棒。这是供应链的奢侈战略。我还没读过那么多供应链商学院的教科书。

Ben: But you hadn’t read that many luxury books before either.
本：但你以前也没读过那么多豪华书籍。

David: I hadn’t read that many luxury books either. I can vouch, this thing is amazing. If you are at all interested either for your own edification or if it’s relevant to your business in supply chain, buy and read this book. It is so good.
大卫：我也没读过那么多奢侈品书籍。我可以保证，这本书非常棒。如果你对这本书感兴趣，不管是为了提高自己的知识水平，还是与你的供应链业务有关，都可以买来读一读。这本书太棒了。

It talks a lot about how they became more and more strategic in their supply chain and specifically their sourcing over time at IKEA. It’s the stuff you talked about, hey, you would think ordinarily we want to squeeze our suppliers on terms. But actually what we really care about is continuity of supply, depth of a relationship with these manufacturers. Let’s do the opposite and embrace them. That was like one level.
这本书讲述了宜家是如何随着时间的推移，在供应链，特别是采购方面变得越来越具有战略性的。这就是你所说的，嘿，你通常会认为我们想在条件上压榨我们的供应商。但实际上，我们真正关心的是供应的连续性，以及与这些制造商的深度合作关系。让我们反其道而行之，拥抱他们。这是一个层面。

Then the next big transformation is when they stopped thinking about sourcing and supply chain in terms of individual products and moved instead to product packages, suites of products, and then whole categories, they could say like, oh, rather than sourcing the POÄNG armchair—that’s a bad example because I’m sure they make that in-house now, but whatever product—let’s take a whole set of armchairs that are pretty similar and let’s bid that out globally rather than in individual markets.
下一个重大转变是，他们不再从单个产品的角度考虑采购和供应链，而是转向产品包、产品套件，然后是整个类别，他们可以说，哦，与其采购 POÄNG 扶手椅--这是个坏例子，因为我肯定他们现在是自己生产的，但不管是什么产品--不如采购一整套非常相似的扶手椅，然后在全球而不是单个市场进行招标。

That’ll let us (a) sure get the best price and then pass that on in value to consumers, but (b) build the deepest and most strategic relationship with the suppliers who are going to make that for us. Then we can also transfer technology to them too.
这将使我们（a）确保获得最优惠的价格，然后将其价值传递给消费者，但（b）与为我们生产这些产品的供应商建立最深入、最具战略性的关系。然后，我们还可以向他们转让技术。

Stuff like the board on frame construction, they’ve done dozens and dozens of these technology advancements in fabrication, factory layouts, and all sorts of stuff over the years, and they transfer that to their supplier partners. It’s super cool.
多年来，他们在制造、工厂布局和各种方面取得了数十项技术进步，并将其转让给供应商合作伙伴。这很酷。

Then stuff like their distribution center strategy, so you would think totally logically almost like Costco, the stores are the warehouses. Well, over time they found that, oh, actually it doesn’t totally make sense that we keep 100% of our products stocked at all of our stores. Instead, let’s focus to what I was talking about my complaint, let’s make sure that the 50% of our products that account for 90% of our sales are really in stock at all of our stores.
他们的配送中心战略，让你觉得完全符合逻辑，就像好市多（Costco）一样，门店就是仓库。但随着时间的推移，他们发现，哦，其实我们在所有门店保持 100% 的产品库存并不完全合理。相反，让我们把重点放在我刚才所说的抱怨上，让我们确保占销售额 90% 的 50% 的产品在所有门店都有库存。

Then for the second half of our product catalog that accounts for the tail end of the power log 10% of sales, let’s do that across pan geographical distribution centers and keep actually a minimum of that in the stores with constant restocking, so that we can maximize the space for the products that we know people are going to want. Anyway, lots of really, really, really great stuff.
然后，对于占销售额 10%的尾部力量日志的下半部分产品目录，让我们在泛地域配送中心进行配送，并在商店中保持最低限度的持续补货，这样我们就可以最大限度地为我们知道人们会需要的产品留出空间。总之，有很多非常、非常、非常棒的东西。

Ben: Fascinating. Stuff you can only do with 81 years of history and a lot of scale.
本：令人着迷。只有拥有 81 年的历史和庞大的规模才能做到这一点。

David: And a lot of money. A lot of cash.
大卫：还有很多钱。很多现金

Ben: Yeah. All right, David, the quintessence?
本：是的。好吧，大卫，精髓是什么？

David: Woo, the quintessence. I’ve been thinking about this one. This is our new…
吴，精髓。我一直在想这个这是我们的新...

Ben: Yeah. For anyone who didn’t listen to the Meta episode, David and I renamed this section because we’ve been struggling with how do we land the plan, what’s the end of an episode look like? And David, you came up with this term, the quintessence.
本：是的。对于没有收听《元》这一集的人来说，大卫和我重新命名了这一部分，因为我们一直在纠结如何制定计划，一集的结尾是什么样的？大卫，你想出了这个词--"精髓"。

David: We boil it down after all this work we’ve done on the company, this long recording, like what is the essence? What is the quintessential factor of this company?
大卫：在我们为公司做了这么多工作、录了这么长时间的音之后，我们把它归结为：什么是精髓？这家公司的精髓是什么？

I had been planning to say this idea of the many, and I think that there’s a reason Ingvar had it as testament number one, in The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. But man, the more we talk about this, I really think it’s something a little more “Meta,” which is this is an n-of-1 company. There is no other company in the world like this. It is so esoteric in so many ways. There is nothing else like this out there.
我一直打算说 "多 "这个概念，我认为英格瓦把它作为《家具商遗书》的第一条遗书是有原因的。但是，我们谈得越多，我就越觉得这是个更 "Meta "的概念，即这是一家 "n-of-1 "的公司。世界上没有任何一家公司像它一样。它在很多方面都非常神秘。世界上没有任何一家公司能与之媲美。

Ben: Or put differently. I think mine is the combination of never taking a single outside shareholder plus Ingvar’s personality and the desire to serve the many equals this company. All of those are necessary conditions, and there are many more too, but those are really necessary in order to create what IKEA ended up becoming
本：或者换一种说法。我认为我的宜家是从未吸收过一个外部股东，加上英格瓦的个性和为大众服务的愿望，这两者的结合就等于这家公司。所有这些都是必要条件，还有很多其他条件，但这些都是创建宜家的必要条件。

David: And the structure that it ends up with. I guess maybe to put an even finer point that this is an n-of-1 company. The n-of-1 term is a little overused post–0-to-1. We make the argument all the time, like every company we cover on Acquired is unique. Meta is an n-of-1 company, Amazon is an n-of-1 company, et cetera.
大卫：以及它最终的结构。我想，也许可以说得更细一点，这是一家 n-of-1 公司。N-of-1这个词在0-to-1之后有点被用滥了。我们一直在说，我们在《Acquired》上报道的每家公司都是独一无二的。Meta 是一家 n-of-1 公司，亚马逊是一家 n-of-1 公司，等等。

Ben: But that’s the point.
本：但这就是重点。

David: That’s all true. I think this is even another level. All the big tech companies, yes they’re all unique, yes they’re all individual, but they’re all big tech companies. There just is no other IKEA. There’s nothing like it.
大卫：这都是事实。我认为这甚至是另一个层面。所有的大型科技公司，是的，它们都很独特，是的，它们都很有个性，但它们都是大型科技公司。宜家是独一无二的。没有什么能与之相比。

Ben: That’s interesting. No other vertically-integrated retailer brand of this scale in any category. It’s Apple, but if they serve the many instead of the few.
本：这很有趣。在任何品类中，都没有其他垂直整合零售商品牌能达到如此规模。这是苹果，但如果他们服务的是多数人而不是少数人的话。

David: Well I guess arguably they do serve the many, but they have very high margins.
大卫：嗯，我想可以说它们的确是为许多人服务的，但它们的利润率非常高。

Ben: Well, but they specifically could serve five times more people than they do serve if they were willing to forego margins. Maybe eventually they will. They might be on a path to that.
本：好吧，但如果他们愿意放弃利润，具体来说，他们可以为比现在多五倍的人提供服务。也许最终他们会这样做。他们可能正走在这条路上。

David: That’s a good point. This company is Apple if they decided to also be Android, essentially. We are going to own the whole market.
大卫：说得好。如果苹果公司也决定做安卓，那么这家公司本质上就是苹果公司。我们将拥有整个市场。

Ben: It seems like your definition is a brand that is vertically integrated, that is at $50-billion-a-year scale and serves philosophically the many. In some ways that’s what Tesla is aiming to be. These are not high-margin cars. They’re sold at the price where they can be the best-selling car in America. It’s hard to compete globally on EVs since the US and China are becoming pretty fragmented ecosystems.
本：你的定义似乎是一个垂直整合的品牌，年销售额达 500 亿美元，在理念上服务于大众。在某些方面，这正是特斯拉的目标。这些汽车的利润率并不高。它们的售价可以成为美国最畅销的汽车。由于美国和中国的生态系统正在变得非常分散，因此很难在全球范围内竞争电动汽车。

But everything about Tesla is rate manufacturing, drive prices as low as you can, vertically-integrated. They don’t sell through any analysis. There’s no channel, there are no middlemen. But a brand of consumer good that is vertically-integrated and sold at low margin to the many.
但特斯拉的一切都以生产率为导向，尽可能压低价格，垂直整合。他们不通过任何分析进行销售。没有渠道，没有中间商。但这是一个垂直整合的消费品品牌，以低廉的利润面向大众销售。

David: Globally. I’m just having a really tough time thinking of any. I can think of retailers for sure.
大卫：全球。我真的很难想到。我肯定能想到零售商。

Ben: Yeah. Super fascinating. All right. We have reached it, the quintessence of IKEA.
本：是的。超级迷人。好了我们到了，宜家的精髓。

David: I think so. I’m so glad we did this company. It was, in many ways, off the wall. It’s this private, weird structure. Nobody can invest in it.
大卫：我想是的。我很高兴我们成立了这家公司。从很多方面来说，这都是天方夜谭。它是一个私人的、奇怪的结构。没人能投资它。

Ben: Totally. And I will tell you, for some reason I’m just not as fired up about it as compared to a Costco or an Hermes. But you study it, it’s really interesting, and it totally is n-of-1.
本：完全正确。我告诉你，出于某种原因，与好市多或爱马仕相比，我对它并不那么感兴趣。但你研究一下，它真的很有趣，完全是 n-of-1。

I think the future to me is not quite as clear as some of these other companies. I think there are certainly a lot of question marks around what do they look like in an e-commerce world, a world that’s shifting to urbanization, and a world where they’re now a big company.
对我来说，未来并不像其他一些公司那样明朗。我认为，在一个电子商务的世界、一个向城市化转变的世界，以及一个他们现在是一家大公司的世界里，他们会是什么样子，肯定会有很多问号。

David: What are they going to do with all this cash, et cetera.
大卫：他们打算怎么处理这些现金，等等。

Ben: That’s the reason watching them is going to be fun over the next decade or two.
本：正因为如此，在未来的十年或二十年里，观看他们的比赛才会充满乐趣。

David: All right. Carve outs.
大卫：好的。分割。

Ben: I’ve got two. One is a show on Netflix called Detroiters. I think a previous carve out of mine was the show I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. This is his first show with his buddy who’s the, I think, co-producer. He appears in I Think You Should Leave also.
本：我有两个。一个是 Netflix 上的一个节目，叫《底特律人》。我觉得我之前的一个节目是蒂姆-罗宾逊（Tim Robinson）的《我认为你应该离开》（I Think You Should Leave）。这是他和他的朋友合作的第一部剧，他的朋友应该是联合制片人。他在《我认为你应该离开》中也有出演。

It’s a little bit more story-driven and less skit-driven than I Think You Should Leave, but it is totally the same Tim Robinson sense of humor. It has me dying laughing. So I highly recommend Detroiters.
与《我想你应该离开》相比，《我想你应该离开》的故事性更强一些，短剧性更弱一些，但完全延续了蒂姆-罗宾逊的幽默感。它让我笑得死去活来。因此，我强烈推荐《底特律人》。

The second one, I have a device I just recently bought. The new super thin 11-inch iPad Pro.
第二个，我最近刚买了一台设备。全新超薄 11 英寸 iPad Pro。

David: How is it?
大卫：怎么样？

Ben: It is awesome.
本：太棒了。

David: It’s so sexy.
大卫：太性感了。

Ben: There’s something really amazing about the promotion scrolling on a big screen when I’m just sitting there, and it feels impossibly thin. I know that’s a marketing slogan, but you feel it in your hands and you’re like, how? How is there an all-day battery life in this? And the screen is much more enjoyable to sit and read things on there than looking at my computer.
本：当我坐在那里时，大屏幕上滚动播放的宣传内容真的很神奇，感觉薄得不可思议。我知道这是一句营销口号，但你拿在手里就会想，怎么会这样？怎么会有全天候的电池续航时间？而且坐在上面看东西比看着电脑更爽。

In fact, in particular, for each of these episodes now, I read the Worldly Partners research on the company we’re covering from front of the show, Arvind. I was able to read the whole thing, take it in, in a much more enjoyable way when reading it on the iPad versus sitting on my computer scrolling. It just feels really good. By the way, we’ll link to that research in the show notes for anyone who wants to go read 50–100 pages analyzing in a very structured way, the business of IKEA.
事实上，特别是在现在的每期节目中，我都会阅读 Worldly Partners 关于我们在节目前报道的公司的研究报告，Arvind。与坐在电脑上滚动相比，在iPad上阅读时，我能够以一种更愉快的方式读完整篇文章，并将其收入囊中。感觉真的很好。顺便说一下，我们会在节目笔记中为那些想阅读50-100页的研究报告的人提供链接，这些报告以非常有条理的方式分析了宜家的业务。

David: Listen to four hours and then read another 50–100 pages.
大卫：听四个小时，然后再读 50-100 页。

Ben: But yeah, I love it. This iPad is so great.
本：不过，我很喜欢。这台 iPad 太棒了。

David: I’m so tempted because we both have the iPad minis that we got for when we do things live with guests.
大卫：我太想了，因为我们都有 iPad mini，这是为我们与客人现场表演时准备的。

Ben: Yeah, this is too big to use on stage.
本：是的，这个太大了，不适合在舞台上使用。

David: Oh, no, I was going to say, the iPad minis suck, and the thing that’s worst about them is the screen.
戴维：哦，不，我想说的是，iPad mini 很糟糕，最糟糕的是它的屏幕。

Ben: It’s awful. Apple doesn’t love it at all.
本：太糟糕了。苹果公司一点都不喜欢它。

David: They really suck. It’s a terrible product. We need it for that specific use case.
大卫：他们真的很烂。这是一款糟糕的产品。我们需要它来满足特定的用例。

Ben: And it was fine when it came out, but it just feels like the leftover parts bin now. I almost bought the new one and I’m like, it’s the same screen. It’s last year’s dead-end processor from the iPhones. It’s just a weird franken device. The size is very compelling. I wish it had the iPad Pro screen. I wish it was thin. It doesn’t have to be thin, but try. I wish it had a new processor. I don’t know. It’s a bummer. They don’t care and it’s clear.
本：刚出来的时候还不错，但现在感觉就像用剩的零件箱。我差点就买了新的，但我想，还是那个屏幕。它的处理器也是去年 iPhone 的老古董。这就是个奇怪的破设备。尺寸非常引人注目。我希望它有 iPad Pro 的屏幕。我希望它更薄。不一定要薄，但可以试试。我希望它有一个新的处理器。我也不知道。真扫兴。他们不在乎，这很明显。

David: They don’t care. I don’t even know why they make it, but I’m glad they do because we can use it for our use case.
大卫：他们不在乎。我甚至不知道他们为什么要做这个，但我很高兴他们做了，因为我们可以用它来满足我们的用例。

Anyway. I also have two carve outs. My first one is a re-carve out admittedly, but I’ve been enjoying so much this season, The QB School.
总之。我也有两个 "carve out"。第一个我承认是重刻，但我很喜欢这一季的《QB 学校》。

Ben: I thought that was where you were going.
本：我以为你要去那里。

David: Man, it is so awesome to have The QB School specifically, but stuff like this on YouTube where, for folks who don’t know, this is a YouTube channel called The QB School, JT O’Sullivan who was a journeyman NFL quarterback for a decade.
大卫：天哪，有 "四分卫学校 "真是太棒了，但像 YouTube 上的这些东西，对于不知道的人来说，这是一个名为 "四分卫学校 "的 YouTube 频道，JT-奥沙利文曾在 NFL 担任了十年的四分卫。

He breaks down film of quarterback performances every week, breaks down the actual film from the whole as they would do it in an NFL quarterback’s room or the all 22 “camera angle” where you see all 22 players on the field, as opposed to what you see when you’re watching highlights or watching a game.
他每周都会分析四分卫的表现影片，从整体上分析实际影片，就像他们在 NFL 四分卫的房间里所做的那样，或者从全部 22 个 "摄像机角度"，你可以看到场上全部 22 名球员，而不是你在观看集锦或比赛时看到的那样。

When I first started watching and I had it as my carve out the first time, I was like, oh, it’s just cool to see this. I don’t understand 90% of what he’s talking about. I now understand a lot more, and it’s so awesome that consumers, I’m never going to play football again and certainly never going to play in the NFL, but being able to appreciate and understand what quarterbacks are doing and what teams are doing and players are doing at this professional level just increases my enjoyment so much more.
当我第一次开始看，第一次把它作为我的雕刻作品时，我就想，哦，看到这个简直太酷了。我不明白他所说的 90%。现在我理解得更多了，这对消费者来说太棒了，我再也不会打橄榄球了，当然也不会在 NFL 打球了，但能够欣赏和理解四分卫在做什么，球队在做什么，球员在做什么，这些职业层面的东西会让我更喜欢。

Especially this season when there are so many quarterback narratives going on. I don’t even listen to the talking heads anymore talk about Anthony Richardson or Bryce Young or whatever, because even if those talking heads were NFL players and they know what’s happening, they need to dumb it down for the mass audience. I’d rather just watch the film with JT.
尤其是这个赛季，四分卫的话题太多了。我甚至都不再听那些话题人物谈论安东尼-理查德森（Anthony Richardson）或布莱斯-杨（Bryce Young）什么的了，因为即使那些话题人物是 NFL 球员，他们知道发生了什么，他们也需要为广大观众说清楚。我宁愿和 JT 一起看电影。

Ben: Oh dude, I feel like that with Tom Brady. He just sits there in silence. Whatever is going on in his head is not at the right level for what needs to be said.
本：哦，老兄，我和汤姆-布雷迪在一起就有这种感觉。他只是沉默地坐在那里。无论他脑子里在想什么，都没有达到需要表达的程度。

David: I want to know what’s going on in your head. Anyway, really enjoying it. It’s been great this season.
大卫：我想知道你脑子里在想什么。不管怎样，我真的很喜欢这一季很棒

Then my second carve out, another sports media–related one was, did you watch Ice Cube’s performance during the World Series at the Dodgers game ?
我的第二个问题是，你看了 Ice Cube 在世界大赛道奇队比赛中的表演吗？

Ben: I did not.
本：我没有。

David: Oh man, it was so good. I’m a Giants fan, so it pains me to say this, but Ice Cube, I think it was Game 2 of the World Series at Dodgers Stadium, performed at the start of the game. He just walks out from the center field fence, and then performs two songs, raps two songs while walking to home plate. It’s just him and a cameraman.
大卫：天哪，太精彩了。我是巨人队的球迷，所以这么说让我很难过，但 Ice Cube，我想那是在道奇体育场举行的世界大赛第二场比赛，他在比赛开始时表演。他从中场围栏走出来，然后表演了两首歌曲，一边说唱两首歌曲，一边走向本垒板。只有他和一名摄影师。

You and I now have performed in an arena, and we know what that is like. One person, Ice Cube, with no backing vocals, live on a mic, walking the length of a baseball field up to home plate, and just holding the stadium in the palm of his hands, it’s one of the most incredible performances I’ve ever seen.
你我都曾在竞技场上表演过，我们知道那是什么感觉。冰立方一个人，没有伴唱，现场使用麦克风，走过一个棒球场的长度，走到本垒板前，就这样把全场捧在手心，这是我见过的最不可思议的表演之一。

Ben: I got to watch it.
本：我去看了。

David: In broad daylight. Yeah, it’s awesome.
光天化日之下是啊，太棒了

Ben: Ice Cube.
本：冰块

David: Ice Cube.
大卫：冰块

Ben: Well, listeners, thank you so much for going on this journey with us. A huge thank you to our partners, J.P. Morgan Payments, Statsig, and Crusoe. Please check out the link in the show notes to learn more about any of those companies and their fantastic products that we talked about earlier in the episode.
本：好了，听众朋友们，非常感谢你们和我们一起走过这段旅程。衷心感谢我们的合作伙伴 J.P. Morgan Payments、Statsig 和 Crusoe。请查看节目注释中的链接，了解更多关于这些公司的信息，以及我们在本期节目中提到的他们的神奇产品。

We want to give three special thank yous to Jim Sinegal, the co-founder and former CEO of Costco for his chat about IKEA as we were doing the research; to Bjorn Bayley, the former president of IKEA US; and to Lars-Johan Jarnheimer, who is the chairman of the board of Ingka Group. Is that right, David? Or I guess it’s the IKEA group within Ingka.
我们要特别感谢好市多的联合创始人和前首席执行官吉姆-西内格尔（Jim Sinegal），感谢他在我们做研究时谈及宜家；感谢宜家美国公司前总裁比约恩-贝利（Bjorn Bayley）；感谢英卡集团董事会主席拉斯-约翰-亚恩海默（Lars-Johan Jarnheimer）。是这样吗，大卫？或者我猜是英卡集团中的宜家集团。

David: Yes, I think that’s right. Is of IKEA group, which I think is the operating entity within Ingka Holdings. The Ingka side of the company.
大卫：是的，我想是这样。宜家集团是英卡控股公司的运营实体。公司的英卡方面。

Ben: And you read all of Leading By Design, right? That’s the most canonical autobiographical book.
本：《领导设计》你都读过吧？那是最经典的自传体书籍。

David: Ah, yes. This is the confusing one. The updated version of the book is called the IKEA Story. The first edition of the book is titled Leading By Design, but it’s the same book.
大卫：啊，是的。这是令人困惑的地方。这本书的更新版叫做《宜家的故事》。这本书的第一版名为《设计引领》（Leading By Design），但其实是同一本书。

Ben: It probably has the best detailed account of the blow-by-blow that we went through. Anyway, if you like this episode, go check out our episodes on Costco, on Walmart, or on Amazon.
本：这可能是我们所经历的最详细的记录。总之，如果你喜欢这一集，可以去看看我们在 Costco、沃尔玛或亚马逊上的节目。

David: Or Hermes.
大卫：或者赫尔墨斯。

Ben: Or Hermes, that’s true. That wasn’t on my piece of paper here because I did not expect it to come up that way. After this episode, come discuss it on Slack.
本：或者是爱马仕，没错。这不在我的纸上，因为我没想到会这样。本集播出后，请到 Slack 上讨论。

Check out ACQ2 with Louis von Ahn from Duolingo. It would be super fun. Find ACQ2 in any podcast player. Seriously, I’m sending it to anyone I know running a consumer startup. It’s just so many practical lessons.
与来自 Duolingo 的 Louis von Ahn 一起查看 ACQ2。这将会非常有趣。在任何播客播放器中都能找到 ACQ2。说真的，我要把它发给我认识的任何经营消费类初创企业的人。里面有很多实用的课程。

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do. We’d really appreciate it. It takes 3–5 minutes. acquired.fm/survey and you might win Meta Ray-bans, or an ACQ dad hat, or David might mail you a POÄNG, perhaps with some assembly. Thank you, David, for volunteering that on air.
如果您还没有参加调查，请参加。我们将非常感激。只需 3-5 分钟。acquired.fm/survey，您就有可能赢得 Meta Ray-bans，或 ACQ 爸爸帽，或者大卫可能会给您邮寄一个 POÄNG，也许还有一些组装。谢谢你，大卫，感谢你在直播中主动提供这个机会。

David: I’ll truck it across country.
大卫：我会用卡车运到全国各地。

Ben: Awesome. Well, with that listeners, we’ll see you next time.
本：太棒了。好了，听众朋友们，我们下次再见。

David: We’ll see you next time.
我们下次再见。

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
注：主持人和嘉宾可能持有本集中讨论的资产。本播客不提供投资建议，仅供参考和娱乐之用。在考虑任何金融交易时，您应自行研究并独立做出决定。