Marketing Ikea is one of the strongest brands in the world. And this despite the fact that the furniture store spends little on advertising compared to Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Nike. Ronald Jungbluth explains why: Are you still living or are you already living? More and more people are answering this question with a resounding "I'm alive!" In the 2005/2006 financial year, which ended at the end of July, 454 million Ikea fans made a pilgrimage to one of the 221 blue and yellow cathedrals to pay homage to the brightly painted chipboard and light-colored solid wood furniture. After McDonald's, Ikea is the world's most successful franchise model. Year after year, sales have increased against the industry trend to almost 24 billion francs. It all started very modestly 63 years ago.Sweden's Scrooge McDuck1943. Because his parents' farm was so remote, 17-year-old schoolboy Ingvar Kamprad set up a mail order business in Elmtaryd near Agunnaryd. An uncle had to sign the company entry for him because Ingvar was still a minor. Ikea was initially a general store: Kamprad shipped everything from fountain pens to wallets. But when the first piece of furniture, an armchair, triggered a lively demand, he proved his business acumen, quickly expanded the business and limited himself to furniture. With success.
This success has never gone to Kamprad's head. Although, according to Forbes, only five people are richer than him, he doesn't behave like one. On the contrary: he is considered modest, thrifty, even stingy. The mayor of Epalinges in Vaud, where Kamprad has lived for many years, has also been annoyed by this. His childhood as a small farmer, somehow reminiscent of Astrid Lindgren's Bullerbü idyll, left its mark on the 80-year-old billionaire. For Rüdiger Jungbluth, this is one of the reasons why Kamprad was and is so successful with Ikea.
Analysis instead of biographyRüdiger Jungbluth has written more than just another biography of Ingvar Kamprad. In "The 11 Secrets of Ikea's Success", he attempts to analyze why Ikea is not only an extraordinary furniture store, but above all an extraordinarily successful one. He succeeds in this because, as a business journalist, he is good with words as well as figures and knows a thing or two about marketing. Nevertheless, he doesn't reveal any real secrets in his book - not because he can't, no, because there aren't any.
The factors that decide between successful and less successful people, brands or companies are always the same.
And yet there is something different about the crazy furniture store from Sweden: no other brand in the world is so strongly linked to the person behind it. Ikea is Ingvar Kamprad, Ingvar Kamprad is Ikea. That is what others can learn from Kamprad. The man is credible, even though - or precisely because - he is so contradictory. Jungbluth describes him as a capitalist with social democratic ideals.
Roger Hausmann
> The 11 secrets of IKEA's success by Rüdiger Jungbluth; Campus Verlag, Frankfurt, 2006, 288 pages, 43.70 francs.

Print New or further developed technologies in offset printing should be the basis for even more creative inspiration Offset printing - and sheetfed offset in particular - is synonymous with the high quality of the print medium. Packaging printers and many forward-thinking commercial printers have invested in more efficient printing and finishing technology in recent years, despite some signs of crisis. This is because they have recognized that a service portfolio with many extras helps in a tough competitive environment. Those whose services are interchangeable and who sell exclusively on the basis of low prices will not survive in the long term and will jeopardize the entire industry through "spoiled" prices - even though many customers are prepared to pay more for quality or exceptional ideas that make them stand out from the crowd! For creative people, the technical upgrading of printing companies should actually be the basis for even more creative inspiration. But still
Interesting, new or perfected technologies in the sheetfed offset sector are still not sufficiently well known.
Photorealism without waterWaterless offset printing - apart from its pragmatic application in printing presses with integrated plate imaging (e.g. Heidelberg QM 46-4 DI or KBA 74 Karat) - otherwise enjoys a reputation as a high-end process. The elimination of the dampening solution not only makes the offset printing process easier to control and standardize, but also significantly increases the contrast range in the images. Added to this is the lower dot gain of the waterless printing plates, which means that higher screen rulings can be printed and the finest details can be reproduced.
For these reasons, this process is recommended for photorealistic image printing and for particularly effective advertising subjects. The use of the finest autotypical screens (AM) or frequency or cross-modulated screens (FM, XM, not susceptible to disturbing moirés) is almost a must. If available as a waterless formulation, printing inks that extend the Euroscale or ISO color space should be used as the crowning touch. With some manufacturers, at least
Pantone Hexachrome printing inks are available for waterless printing; the range of colors is of course larger for conventional wet offset printing.
So if the color space expansion called "HiFi-Color" is more important to you than the waterless quality, you should opt for FM screen plus
special scale. This does not necessarily require a six-color offset press, as the "Hifi Color Scales" box below shows.
Not just paperIn display and packaging printing, but also in advertising printing, sheet-fed offset presses can be used to print on materials other than just wood-free or coated paper and cardboard. Transparent paper, for example - it doesn't sound very spectacular, but the translucent effect of the subject underneath makes it particularly appealing to the viewer. By printing explanatory or supplementary fonts and graphics, Trans-
The parent paper and the underneath form an attractive unit.
Flexo printing no longer has a monopoly on direct corrugated board printing. At least the ultra-fine flute grades - E (standard), F, G, N and the extremely fine O flute - are available on many medium and large format printing presses.
format machines in sheet-fed offset printing today. In combination with cool die-cutting and embossing, which can completely replace a printed image, a wide variety of sophisticated designs are possible. Incidentally, Switzerland is an international leader in corrugated cardboard processing and die-cutting/embossing machine production.
Plastic printing is a domain
printing with UV inks. Besides
the "usual" foil and card
technically sophisticated processes such as the
Lenticular image printing established. Since
This is the exact printing of images split into strips on the back of a lenticular film, the strip lenses of which compose the various partial images under a different viewing angle. 3D views and changing subjects consisting of two-part or multi-part image sequences are possible.
Inline finishing with lacquerInline lacquering is more cost-effective than offline lacquering or film lamination by specialized service providers. However, "offline" is the better choice when structured films (e.g. for hard-
cover or in outdoor advertising), extreme gloss or the combination with unusual finishing steps are required. Be that as it may, hardly any sheet-fed offset
presses from half format upwards are now supplied without a coater. In addition to the advantage of faster processing of inline-coated sheets (deadline pressure!), print service providers can now offer a feature that more and more customers are demanding from the outset for aesthetic reasons.
The most common machine con
figurations see one or two paint towers after the last
printing unit - usually in conjunction with a so-called delivery extension, in which the
Units for final drying
are accommodated. Two coating towers are referred to as a "double coating machine". There are even machines that additionally coat before the sheet turning device (i.e. on both sides) or have a coating tower before the first printing unit for applying a topcoat or effect primer (e.g. MetalFX coating). Due to the further development of coatings in terms of solids content, maximum layer thickness, flow behavior and effect pigmentation, today
worked with flexo coating units,
consisting of anilox roller, chambered doctor blade, coating form and impression cylinder.
A lot can be "done" with just one paint tower. Dispersion varnish, i.e. water-based varnish, is the dominant type of varnish. The range extends from protective coatings (scratch and scuff protection in use) to matt and high-gloss coatings through to effect coatings in which metallic or pearlescent pigments (e.g. Iriodin) are incorporated. The so-called hybrid finishing of printing inks is becoming more widespread. What the economic
What makes this technology so interesting for creative minds is the option of applying matt or textured oil-based varnish (pigment-free ink) in a spot coating with the final printing unit and printing a glossy UV varnish over the entire surface. The UV varnish cannot adhere to the areas with oil-based varnish, resulting in fantastic gloss contrast effects.
Because conventional printing inks cannot be directly overprinted with a high-gloss UV coating, but must first be sealed with a fast-drying dispersion coating (primer), double-coating machines were developed.
ckelt. However, the two coating towers are now also used for other purposes. For example, some companies alternatively print two dispersion varnishes to simply increase gloss or use effect pigmentation for one of the two varnishes.
Dieter Kleeberg