IKEA FRAKTA Bag

IKEA FRAKTA Bag: History

There is a rich history behind the global famous Ikea Frakta Bag.

Ikea Frakta Bag: From a Shopping Challenge

The origins of FRAKTA can be traced back to the 1960s, when IKEA increasingly promoted the sale of small home furnishing products for its new store in Kungens Kurva, Stockholm, Sweden.

Small items like tealights, duvet covers, and glasses were massive in numbers and difficult to organize for customers. While the standard platform trolleys could benefit customers in the self-serve area, they were useless in helping customers carry small items home. Thus, various customers gave up halfway through their shopping and left many articles on the shelves behind.²

Ikea Frakta Bag: To the Innovative Version

In response to this, in 1986, Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, and his then assistant, Sten Lundén, initiated the idea of making a larger bag for customers to carry on the shoulder, hang on a platform trolley, or carry in their hand while shopping at IKEA.

Soon after, Ingvar accompanied Lars Göran Peterson, head of purchasing at IKEA, to turn his idea into reality. The men then found a suitable Taiwanese manufacturer supplying polypropylene, a material often used for large rice bags.²

In 1989, IKEA tested the first batch of yellow bags at its store in Hamburg, Germany.² These yellow bags were for shopping purposes only. Thus, customers had to leave them in the store after their purchase.

Fig. 1 - IKEA's yellow bag

IKEA FRAKTA Bag: The Blue Commercial Version

It was not so long until Ingvar Kamprad and IKEA realized the knock-on effect of the yellow bags.

IKEA FRAKTA Bag Sizes

Now, IKEA FRAKTA Bag has come in various designs thanks to its popularity and practicality. Generally, there are six basic sizes of IKEA FRAKTA bags with different maximum loadings and dimensions.²

IKEA FRAKTA Bag Marketing

The two core marketing strategies of the IKEA FRAKTA Bag are multichannel social media engagement and reactive marketing. Further, the IKEA FRAKTA bag's perfect-timing characteristics have hugely contributed to its popularity.

IKEA FRAKTA Bag Perfect Timing

IKEA has made a timely design of the IKEA FRAKTA Bag that has perfectly addressed some of the most significant concerns of customers and fashion lovers worldwide.

• Meet the demand of shoppers at IKEA stores. As its original purpose was to facilitate the shopping journey of customers at IKEA stores, IKEA FRAKTA is a strategic design of IKEA that fully meets IKEA customers' needs of efficiently carrying goods in one go.

• Bring convenience to general customers. Beyond the physical IKEA stores, customers have generally wished for multipurpose bags that are both spacious and helpful in carrying their daily items.³ Thus, the birth of the IKEA FRAKTA bag has timely solved the problem of convenience for customers.

• Address sustainable matters. The IKEA FRAKTA bag is made from long-lasting materials that are hard to wear out; the bag is reusable and environmentally friendly. Further, the long-term purpose of the IKEA FRAKTA bag is to encourage customers to reuse their shopping bags and turn them into daily fashion items.² As the world in general, and the fashion industry in specific, have increasingly embraced the term 'sustainability,' the IKEA FRAKTA bag has naturally matched the contemporary concern.

IKEA FRAKTA Bag Marketing Strategy

Honestly, the marketing and advertising of the IKEA FRAKTA bag are indeed one of the least expensive campaigns.

IKEA FRAKTA Bag Media Engagement

Social media marketing lies at the heart of the IKEA FRAKTA bag's media engagement. Through several innovative campaigns, IKEA has fully activated its multichannel social media engagement to market the IKEA FRAKTA bag.³

But which social media channels have IKEA focused on the most?

Are Facebook and Instagram the two names you are thinking of? Well, they are surprisingly not the focus of IKEA's campaign. In fact, IKEA has put more effort into Youtube and Pinterest to market its IKEA FRAKTA bag.³ It is both innovative and reasonable.

Reactive marketing

IKEA has also pioneered reactive marketing, which has become a core marketing strategy for the IKEA FRAKTA bag and other IKEA products.³

As mentioned earlier, IKEA is an expert in designing perfect-timing products. When it comes to IKEA'S marketing strategy, time means everything. IKEA is consistently among the first brands to catch up with every viral trend, such as IKEA's memes. Be it reactive marketing towards Cristiano Ronaldo's Coca-Cola aversion, or a Game of Thrones costume, IKEA has perfectly nailed it with its wise reactive marketing strategy.

Hungry for an example of IKEA's reactive marketing? Let's move to the following famous example of IKEA's brilliant response to Balenciaga's bag that looks similar to the IKEA FRAKTA Bag!

IKEA FRAKTA Balenciaga

In 2017, the high fashion brand Balenciaga introduced a $2,145 look-alike to IKEA's $0.99 FRAKTA bags. Being a tactical player of reactive marketing strategy, IKEA partnered with Acne, the creative consultancy company, to launch an unexpected yet brilliant campaign giving customers some "tips" on how to know that the IKEA FRAKTA blue bag is the real deal.³

How fast and furious! But the campaign's effects have been long-lasting! While IKEA's swift response created no tension between the two brands, IKEA managed to showcase the worth of its $0.99 IKEA FRAKTA bag and how versatile it can be.

Soon after the campaign's release, DIY lovers worldwide joined forces in using the IKEA FRAKTA bag for innovative purposes and even re-designing the bag into other items.³ Browsing Pinterest or googling keywords like FRAKTA mask, FRAKTA cap, or FRAKTA shoes, you can see that IKEA and its FRAKTA bag are everywhere!