Hi everybody. I'm Nicola Tangen, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and today I'm really thrilled to welcome Yesp Burin, the CEO of IKEA.

Now I as you know runs this iconic blue and yellow stores that had that have transformed perhaps your living room but for sure homes worldwide and they brought a slice of Scandinavian design to almost 900 million visitors every year.

Thank you for the opportunity uh Nikolai to be part of uh this uh incredible podcast and and thank you for doing the commercial for IKEA so I don't have to.

I would love just to go uh visiting a store with you. So can we just uh put on our customer hat and let's go into any store. So we enter the door. What is the first thing we see?

The first thing it's actually it's interesting since I had the pleasure uh to work very close to Invampra our founder uh for many years walking a store with him I realized that there is nothing um left to chance so to say.

Um and that somebody will also hand you a bag which was Ingvar's of course insight that if we hand out bags um you will begin your shopping even sooner. So that is both uh a friendly gesture and a smart commercial uh trick from IKEA.

And these are not small bags. These are pretty big ones, right? The blue the blue ones.

Well, the blue bags have um uh we use the yellow bags when you are inside the store and then you replace it with blue when you when you leave. The blue bags have become iconic and I think in hundreds of millions of households they serve for moving things as laundry bags and whatnot. Um uh I even know that some of the professional tennis players of the world use them when they go to their center courts for games and so forth. So it's an iconic IKEA product for sure.

Now what are some of the other things that we should we should note? We we go through this maze right at the entrance. We we try to say a couple of uh send a couple of messages. One message is around food because um uh typically our customers have traveled uh from somewhere and we know for sure that you don't make good business deals on an empty stomach. So we want to promote the opportunity to actually spend some time in a restaurant.

Uh you have the opportunity to if you bring your kids to actually uh uh drop them off in the small land area which is like the haven for kids to play and have fun while while the parents are looking for things for the home. Uh you would definitely see some inspiration around life at home and home furnishing. uh you would see a strong message around low price that we would send and today these days you would always uh see messages around how we try to show up as a company in in terms of being people and planet positive and uh so around sustainability. So these are some of the messages.

Now at the end you then have some kind of shockingly cheap offer to remind everybody before you leave that you are super cheap. I guess I I I think you're using amazing words here. Shockingly, we we sometimes say uh uh tapa undone predictive which means breathtaking items. So we try to promote um low price at the beginning but for IKEA it's it's a an interesting thing because um our job is not really to be cheap. We we serve people with thin wallets out there.

What we always try to say is a story about not only the low price but how we made it, what are the built-in sustainability around it, uh the functions, the quality items and so on. So, it's hopefully not just a good offer, but actually a story around it.

How many meatballs do you sell a year?

I don't know. It's a lot of meatballs. We We are one of the actually one of the big u food um companies of the world. It's interesting because I I recall back in it must have been back in 2013 or 14. We took a look at ourselves when it comes to food, which is a complimentary part of our offer and not the primary one. And we realized with the help of some big organizations that we actually have an quite auh food footprint both when it comes to sales uh customers but also when it comes to uh health aspects and sustainability aspects.

So I know for a fact this was the starting point for us to actually start the journey towards also offering plant based more healthy alternatives and so forth. Um but we are probably the biggest seller of meat bones in the world I would say.

I suspect now um affordable design for everybody. It sounds pretty simple, right? But um why has nobody managed to replicate what you do?

Well, I think there are a lot of good companies out there who who try it. But I I it's an interesting question because um it is definitely a very tricky uh task what we're trying to achieve. So we have this um formula of design which we call democratic design. So that represents five things.

and then you have all of these at a low price.

So one of the things that is required is definitely scale in order to so to say achieve all these um um uh identities in a product. Um but it requires a lot of knowledge from an engineering point of view to actually build things in a smarter way. So again, I think a lot of competitors do do a good job, but IKEA is dedicated for every product to try to actually design it in a way to prove that you don't you don't have to be rich to be smart.

If we were to uh just spend a few uh minutes on the products, how many products do you typically have? So we typically have some between some nine and 10,000 products to offer in any given market. And how many would be uh there for a long period of time? How much do you change and how much would be kind of evergreens?

Well, we we actually change about 20% of our products annually right now. I would say approximately half of that would be color updates of textiles or it might even be you know products that we do we learn things and we do improvements technically quality wise and so forth and then but at least 10% will be uh entirely new products at the same time.

And how many of these kind of uh totally classic things like the billy bouquets and so on what kind of how many of those do you have?

So in our range we have approximately you can say 20% of our range would be top families as we call them or key products in IKEA. Uh you're right Billy is definitely one of the longlasting uh products in IKEA. Um you have clip uh you have armshare and you have uh quite a number of storage units as well. Uh we have our kitchen unit our packs wardrobes and so on.

Nevertheless these products are also updated. There are cali changes, there are improvements to it. The PAX wardrobe in IKEA, which is one of the oldest products, has recently been remade. So instead of being two people for 25 minutes to assemble a wardrobe, you can actually click it together in 5 minutes.

Do you only have IKEA furniturees at home? Now, now I start to sound like a salesperson. I real but you learned me in there. Uh, no, I don't only have IKA products. I I have a lot of IKEA products uh in in my home for sure, but not only.

Where did the uh concept of flat pack uh furniture come about? Well, it it's been argued who was the inventor of the flat pack, but definitely this goes way back to the early days of IKEA.

And um Ingar himself um and Gilis Lung, one of the first designers, if not the first actually designing IKEA. Um they basically had a cocreation on a table um a side table to a sofa where they realized that if they could find a way to take off the legs uh you would save uh approximately 80% of the air and thereby drive down the prices. So this product H called Levette is uh claimed to be one of the first if not the first uh flatback product and still today it is incredibly interesting because if you look at what that does from a cost perspective and a climate footpoint uh uh point of view it's just an incredible invention.

and still today it is incredibly interesting because if you look at what that does from a cost perspective and a climate footpoint uh uh point of view it's just an incredible invention.

Has a ever stolen a design?

I I wouldn't uh be able to answer that if I look back uh earlier generations but if you look at my own period at IKEA and uh also being the leader of EKO Sweden who is the design company I think we pride ourselves to develop our own designs.

Of course we we will be inspired of the you know of the the different um trends of the time but we are very careful to not copy anybody else or infringe on anybody's rights and I can't remember even um uh you know if you look at the last decades any any argument around that comprod um founded IA in 1943 when he was 17 years old and you worked with him for a very long time right.

comprod um founded IA in 1943 when he was 17 years old and you worked with him for a very long time right.

Well I had the opportunity to work as assistant to him starting in late 99 for 3 years actually and then of course uh ever since we became good friends and I had the pleasure to work with him.

How would you describe him as a person because he was a bit of a what should we say a fairy tale type of figure in Sweden? Right.

Well, he was a very special person. When I when I started as um his assistant, I I didn't really know him that well and what I found um many things I found interesting and one of the things what is very authentic uh person.

So, as he told me his life story, you know, he made a success in his late 30s. The company was growing. He made a lot of money and only to realize that for him the personal success or the value of money had actually quite little interest for him. So he returned to his childhood um uh style and his childhood principles which was a person who lived quite the thrifty life. He was very costconcious.

I tried to convince him to change his old Volvo but he kept it for the rest of his life. Today it's donated actually to the Volvo Museum in Gatenburg. Uh and as far as I know it still runs.

Um he was um uh he was a true entrepreneur. He was um a person with great vision. Uh he was not so good at strategy. I would say he skipped that part and he went straight for actions on the store floor on the factory floor and so on. And he just that was the two places he loved to be. He basically detested the boardrooms or the committees and um for him life was about the factory developing products uh with people or the store making sure that we make a better job for our customers.

Um it's interesting I suspect that a lot of retail founders are a bit the same way right obsessed about the there are several people who have similar uh philosophies as as he he had. Um he was also of that generation who basically understood how to scale business and create value through scale and IA was a master in that.

How have you how do you make sure that his uh values are still present in the firm?

Well, I think he did a good job with the values. The values in IKEA is not something that comes as a communication slogan afterwards but it's actually integrate in in into from the recruitment to how we like to work.

Um and it is in it is interesting because the question came when he passed away how we would continue to maintain and develop the culture and I've seen through the last years you know that has been probably the most difficult period for any one of us in business like for yourself. Um we have had pandemic war economic turmoil trade war uh climate crisis. So these have not been easy times. Um what I've seen in IKEA is that we have been able to do quite well maintain speed in the company uh a lot thanks to the values where people know that they are actually mandated to take decisions and empower themselves um and that we try to lead in a humb style together. I believe Ringa would have been proud if I've seen how actually we are leading the company today.

One of the things you focus in a lot on is sustainability and um whilst some other companies have kind of backtracked a bit here, you are really holding the ground. Um why why are you so convinced about this?

Well, I think to start with I think it's an interesting divide in the world and and I see more and more companies actually being on the uh train ride to to become climate smart. Um uh many of them might not shout it out loudly. Many many think that they are still in the early days of it.

But I've uh interesting enough I've seen uh also in the banking world and in services uh in particular in US but also in uh parts of other parts of the world where people have backtracked them which I found interesting.

Now in our case um we took the decision to um to be a leader when it comes to uh climate smartness um actually even before the Paris agreement was signed and we have been a pioneer in figuring out both how do you understand your impact how do you measure that in terms of what is called scope 3 which means basically end to end for the company and interesting enough at this moment many years into the climate work what we have found except that It's good from an ethical perspective because we like to contribute from a moral standpoint. Um it is uh something that has strengthen IKEA's brand massively.

We have data points that shows across all of the world how important this is for people.

And here comes the most interesting part of them all. Maybe Nikolai a lot of people think that the climate transformation would come at a extra high cost or at some so to say um uh as a as a burden. What we have found out is from raw material production, transport, retailing all the way to customers that it's actually uh helped us reduce our cost and become a much uh smarter financially uh set company for the future.

Because what is interesting is if you ask people, they rate environment very highly, but they are not really very keen to pay extra for it, are they?

That that's right. I think one of the common misunderstandings with that which I would subscribe to a while ago myself uh there was a lady I met in um making a home visit in Bgrade a couple of years ago. She was a single mother, two kids, uh two jobs. Uh we had a discussion because she was passionate about uh about environment. She she was very fearful for climate change. Uh she saw that all around and for her kids future. And when I asked her if she was prepared to pay extra for an IKEA product that would be climate smart, she said no.

And then she explained to me, I don't have the money. So I have two jobs. I have two kids. My mother comes and help me when they're back from school, etc. Do you really expect me to pay? Um, and she was very clear say, I expect you, yes, and leaders like you and me, Nikolai, to take our responsibility. And I think she was morally right. What I didn't know then that she was actually financially right.

There is no need to pay extra for sustainability. On the contrary, everything we have done in IKEA um to become climate smart has actually made us save money. And when you think about it, it's obvious because of course if you use less material or material in a smarter way or have the opportunity of circular material, would that make you more expensive or would it make you lower? Of course, it's lower price. If you implement renewable energy instead of expensive uh um oil and gas, you don't only get independence, you actually of course get a lower energy bill. Our energy bill in IKEA is 29% lower than before Paris agreement.

And then you continue step by step in the value chain. And even if it's not always that easy, it requires investments and it requires that you take a big step putting your whole scale behind it otherwise you don't get the financial benefits.

you've taken all this uh one more step forward to even uh have uh creating a secondhand market for your for your products.

The secondhand part uh I would say it's still a bit of um uh test and trial from our side. It's u very much appreciated by customers. If I look at the total carbon footprint of IKEA, it's not the thing that has contributed the biggest uh carbon reduction. Uh but we're on our way. So what we do is we offer takeback service to our stores. Um we do sell secondhand furniture through our all our stores globally and recently we have started to engage in Norway in Spain and we are intending to roll it out globally. We have actually created our own secondhand digital platform where then customers can actually get uh an easier way to sell their IKEA uh products um from customer to customer.

Very interesting. Um, now you are known for these huge uh stores outside cities, but you now have opened a flagship store on London's Oxford Street. Um, tell me about it. Why why is this?

I think it's one of the biggest investments we've done to be honest. So hopefully uh it will work. It's it's an interesting thing because um a few years ago when we um when we started to deep interview customers around the world um this is actually before IKEA transformed into omni channel and online at all back then some 8 years ago we were more or less only uh store-based. So when we spoke to customers, they told us uh that if you don't show up uh on an ordinary workday when I put my kids to bed and and uh I need something. If you don't show up online in my phone or on my laptop, I'm I'm going to start to deselect you. So that was a very important message for us to hear from my customers.

The same customers often said in particular the ones living in the uh biggest cities or the metropolitan areas of the world say we will go to IKEA in Tokyo in London in York uh from time to time but again if we if we don't have an IKEA around the corner or 10 minutes away we might choose somebody else so we we began a journey uh of transforming into online services the whole logistical backbone of IKEA was re-engineered.

And as a part of that you can say the cream on top was that we started to experiment with uh smaller versions of IKEA in cities.

Interesting enough I think we made so many mistakes and so many miscalculations on what we thought customers in the city uh would like to have. Um but seven years down the road we've actually found a format which is much like a big store. It's just a bit smaller but you can actually buy everything from IKEA. You can have your meatballs and obviously you won't be able to pick up your sofa from Oxford Street, but you will be able to shop everything and a lot of products you you can take with you on the same day actually.

How is it working out?

Well, it's a couple of weeks in. It's u we are running in the second week. It's one of the biggest successes uh from an opening point of view we had uh so far. So already the first week it was the second uh biggest store when it comes to visitations uh in IKEA. And if you compare that then to the big stores out there, that has has to be seen as a success. But we need to give it a year um to see also that we manage um as well when it come not only to attract people but also financially.

Well, for sure I will check it out when I'm in London next.

It's a cool place. It has a couple of extra spices to Nikki experience that I think you will enjoy.

Now how uh is the geopolitical situation impacting how you source and how you think about your supply chain?

Well, you can say for for decades we were used I think in our generation um um yearbyyear um easier uh to do multilateral uh deals um less issues with borders. So we were sort so to say I think taken for granted that the pathway of uh collaboration around trade would continue and then we find ourselves in some 10 years back in a much more challenging situation.

I think it's understandable the world is changing um as I met somebody in Davos in January who said that we we have left one world order and we haven't yet established a new one and times in between tend to be a little bit chaotic and that's what we're seeing today.

So obviously you can say it puts pressure on companies in general and big companies like IKEA find ourselves in the interesting dilemma that way back companies used to be quick and government slow and if you look at the speed of governments right now and not for a good reason. It's difficult for us as companies to to keep up.

Um so what we do we continue to invest um we continue to think long term in our markets. Um and basically we have to mitigate some of the uh issues around the trade restrictions and so on along the way.

Why do you think Swedish companies are so much more successful than Norwegian companies in terms of rolling rolling out internationally?

Well, is that so? I think uh well I think we have had um a different uh successes, right? I think Norway has been incredibly successful in energy. uh when it comes to uh uh companies like Yara working with fertilization and so on. So there are different things in Norway with that is of course phenomenal.

Um uh Sweden has been good in technology and in um with IKEA as one of the leader but many more like H&M. I I think maybe one of the reasons that Scandinavians in general are successful is that we know that we're small. So in order to be successful we have to be out there. We have to adapt. We have to understand different cultures and look for opportunities and win-win.

And I do believe um as of today in this world, I think Scandinavian companies and leaders in general are um in the forefront of looking for win-win solutions.

You mentioned technology. Tell us how you think technology will shape IKEA going forward.

To start with, you can say uh IKA was late in the digital um revolution if you like. So basically uh platform companies like Amazon and more revolutionized retailing um you know for good I would say and that revolution started in the early 2000s. IKEA continued to be very successful with our store formats and and um with our business. So it was first somewhere around 2012 14 15 we started to see change behaviors with our customers.

So we were late on that and as I referred to before we decided to make the the online and the omni channel transformation. Interesting enough Nikolai um as we took that decision we had no clue about the pandemic that came a few years later.

Now thanks to us shifting to online it actually saved the company during the pandemic. We would have been in massive red numbers in layoffs and in in a great retraction of volumes and everything if it wouldn't have been for the opportunity to actually operate through through online. So it gave us um a good lesson I think to to uh keep your eyes and ears open for the changes in the world.

So we see uh AI is uh coming big and for us that's going to re revolutionize and it's already in our value chain revolutionizing uh goods flow helping simplify and saving cost through goods flow. It's helping our us in customer service uh at scale. It's helping us when it comes to home planning how you actually uh serve your customers in making um sense of home planning in the future and probably it's going to help us in many more ways that we don't know today.

your big blue catalog was more ubiquitous than the Bible uh in the Nordic region. Do you still print it?

Uh we we don't print the catalog actually since a couple of years back. There are a few markets I know that keep it as an extra you can say marketing injection but as we knew the catalog as like um the foundation for home furnishing, it started to lose its um uh role when online came. So we at the last years it was also just observing to say that it was a waste of resources. It was a waste of paper in the end and we find other ways better ways to engage with our customers.

Yes. But how would you define your leadership style?

Well I think from a leadership perspective I think um I think I'm a fairly good representative of the IKEA values or at least some of them. So I think people would describe me as u a person with a lot of willpower but also humbleness. I I'm an employee like everybody else in in IKEA and um I think um for me it's important to stay grounded in reality.

Um I worked with Ingbar. I had the opportunity not only to learn from him but also realize that we shared a lot of the same viewpoints of staying grounded with people out there in our factories in our homes in our stores. Um I get joy from that and um I believe thereby also sometimes I and we in IA find actually the pathway to speed in in the future because we are close to reality.

What's the uh what's the key to staying grounded?

Well uh I think happy marriage is number one and stability uh uh in your life in general I think is uh is required because today to be a leader it requires you to be agile. Um again we have seen crisis after crisis you need to develop a way of resilience in your life a way of recharge uh a way of I think accepting that in many ways you need to accept dilemas and accept that you don't have the answers but that you can be open transparent authentic in your leadership will allow you to actually collaborate with people and hopefully do a better job than if you are the know it all so to say.

but that you can be open transparent authentic in your leadership will allow you to actually collaborate with people and hopefully do a better job than if you are the know it all so to say.

You mentioned speed a couple of times. How do you make sure that EKI is a speedy place and why sorry and why is speed so important?

Well, speed is important. I think um agility and speed is important because the world is changing in a faster and faster uh way. Uh we have seen that in technology. We see that in politics and so forth. And being a big company, I think it's one of the biggest risks for us is that we are too slow and too bureaucratic.

And obviously being part of a big system, there is always um force of nature uh that invites you to make things more complicated. maybe hire a little bit too many experts, uh too many meetings and so on. So you need to constantly try to cut down on meetings, uh encourage people to take decisions, to take risks, to dare to to do mistakes. Um IKEA was never there, right? It was developed year by year by people who had the courage to to take those risks.

So I think the biggest threat today for us beside things like climate change, economic turmoil would be our internal capability to actually be entrepreneurs.

How do you encourage people to take risks? I mean it's a it's by definition a risky business.

Well, I try to be a good example myself and do mistakes.

What's the biggest mistake you ever made?

Well, I I Where should we begin? I I think if you look at the last part um if if we say the definition of mistake is that you have acted on a problem but didn't find the right solution if you say like that and I think the last years we have been more entrepreneurial than in a very long time in particular when it comes to transformation of retail so we have invested both digitally and uh physically in as we spoke about city stores and other things that simply didn't work in the beginning um but By having that spirit and not just working linearly but actually iterate a lot of different tests and trials you you will be faster in finding the pathway to the future.

but By having that spirit and not just working linearly but actually iterate a lot of different tests and trials you you will be faster in finding the pathway to the future.

So how do I encourage people? Well, I have one of my favorite techniques is I have a banana card and the banana card was actually invented in a dialogue with uh a big group of IKEA colleagues who said openly that I we feel sometimes afraid of daring to make mistakes. What would be the consequences?

So, I invented this card where where I basically co-sign uh in advance for your mistake and I've handed that out to a lot of people and I actually do follow up with everyone who I handed this card to but more as an encouragement to say if you do a mistake and you look for somebody to share that burden with you can count on me.

and obviously symbolically to say don't wait with acting on your ideas. If you have an idea and you don't act on it, it's not only that we miss the opportunity of uh of learning but I think people who don't act on ideas slowly and gradually uh there's something dying inside you know if you give up on acting on your ideas and for us it's important to be a live community of people who who go for their ideas and continue to look for the next horizon.

Um yes but you you talked about um recharging and uh and so on. I get her that you are uh also a rock star.

No, that that in that case you have been totally misinformed. I like rock music though and you play rock. You play in a band, right?

I I do. I do. I've always done actually.

Lord Beaverbrock. Yeah, that is the recent uh band. That's correct.

So, we are going to play a song here, but not uh not on air, but we'll we'll cut it in afterwards. Which one should we put in? I think you could actually play uh said generation. It's a tribute to the young youth out there who's actually working as activist in the interest of our and next generation. Fantastic. Let's uh let's listen.

the world for you and what does music do to you as a person as a human being?

Well, I've always been interested um of music uh since I was um I think 12 13 years. Uh to be honest, the the first interest in music was I noticed that if I learned to play the guitar and sing um I was more lucky when it comes to the competition of girlfriends and parties and other things. So, I I had a a thought about it.

that my musical interest developed into new uh areas along the way.

Do you think that do you think that's why do you think that's why people start in pop groups generally yet?

Probably below the age of 20 I would I would guess that 80% of them have less interest in music. That's just my opinion.

So um but in any case I I for me to be serious I think music is a way of relaxing. So, uh, after a, you know, a tough day at work or a tough week, if I get one hour with my electric guitar and, um, to play a little bit, that's, uh, super relaxing. It's like totally disconnecting. It's a bit of, uh, meditation for me because you can't do that and have other thoughts in your head. So, it's a way to clean your mind a little bit and it's also incredibly fun to play with others.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you think it does anything to your leadership?

Well, I I think all of us need to have our channel of um uh recharging and for me music is definitely one of them. Um and writing music, writing lyrics, writing music uh gives me so to say another dimension to life and um it opens up to many other dimensions as well.

And of course as a hobby um to have the opportunity to meet the band uh to record in a studio to focus on something totally different gives me a lot of um recharging of batteries for for what I do at work. I think it's very important.

And I think if you have something outside work which you really are passionate about, it makes it easier to cope with stress, easier to um you know think about other things, makes you a more interesting person, more fun also that in the roles that we have also leading as CEOs of big organization and companies, you can get trapped in your own rabbit hole of your own importance, but also you can get stuck in your problems and and also even in the worst case um the myth that if you gear up a little bit extra and work longer hours would be the sleep less etc. that that would be the pathway to success and obviously it's the opposite. You need to find ways to to broaden your perspective and recharge.

Looking at your journey at IKEA, what are you the most proud of?

Well, like a couple of things. Um sometimes it's um it can be details, great products I've been part of um developing and so on. But if I take any area I think it is uh starting in 95 in IKEA in Pakistan Karachi Pakistan was my first assignment.

Um these were the days when IKEA was looking at sourcing uh opportunities outside Europe. So uh I was uh put there to build up uh sourcing of textiles. I did it was an incredible success in many ways from my business growth. But it was also the first time at IKEA when we started to confront ourselves to say do we need to bring our values to our supply chain as well or is it enough if we apply them on our on our own offices or communities.

Um and in the end of the day we so to say came to the conclusion that we have to be a leader when it comes to environmental aspects and social aspects and that goes for everything we do in our value chain. I was part of developing that in Asia uh as a young leader and except for knowing how well it works today and what that has meant uh environmentally but also socially for a lot of people uh I found incredible joy to know that it's helped IA to strengthen its finances. So to be a good business is actually also uh helpful when doing good business.

What is your favorite EK furniture or uh product that you sell?

the kitchen department for six years. So, uh kitchens is I would say it's the most complex product in a care because it's part of a system. So, you need to know many products in order to make a a kitchen. And I found that absolutely fascinating.

And in your mind, what's the key to a good kitchen?

Well, a good kitchen from a home furnishing perspective is actually quality. So by integrating quality in every part of your design uh and still being able to scale that proves that you actually it's proving the IKEA democratic design formula that you can make an affordable kitchen at the best quality.

but then I think kitchen for people is about the heart of the home. It's about providing solutions where people you know relax do their homework, work from home uh enjoy friends, family celebrations. So the kitchen I as I see it is really the heart of the home for people.

Do you cook?

I do. What? I thought you would ask are you a good uh cook but I'm not. Well I in in our family I am the chef chief uh dishwasher. So but I I have a couple of my pasta bologna uh is uh is good.

What is your vision and and your dreams for IKEA for the next 10 years?

So for IKEA for the next 10 years I think um the dream is to continue to to be able to grow and meet um and reach more people both offering jobs and uh meeting more customers around the world and I think the biggest dream in all of that is to be a proof point that it is actually possible to be a good business by doing good business.

So the integration of um uh people, respectful people principles when it comes to diversity, inclusion, uh respect for people, but also uh setting up IKEA as a truly climate smart value chain and driving financial excellence through that is the big vision.

Last question. What is your advice for young people because we got tens and tens of thousands of them listening into this?

Well, I think I think for young people today um and I do have the pleasure to meet a lot of uh young people and young leaders. Um I set up actually um a group of young activists that is advising me and my management group um and they do have full access to the company by the way and we have a very nice agreement that they actually read write a page in in our annual report every year that I don't proofread before they uh write it.

Um I think um the generation today has more information and is also lured by misinformation more than probably any generation before. So I think the important thing is to have hope and to uh be outspoken of your principles what you represent and what you stand for.

And at the same time I think when you think about the future look for something continue to look for the things that you're good at and the things that you love to do. And if you can find the combination of those two things, uh you probably will find happiness. And if you don't, there is always another opportunity to try something new around the corner.

Well, you uh for sure have created a lot of happiness in the millions of homes which you have furnished. And uh so big thanks for doing all that for the world and for making uh all our homes a better place. Great talking to you for this opportunity. Thank you so much.