Bold Claim: right now there's at least one piece of Ikea furniture in your room. Whether it's the Billy bookshelf, the malm bed or this classic: The Swedish Furniture giant has changed the way we live. Stylish, affordable self assembly furniture in flat cardboard boxes and Köttbullar. An incredible formula for success. But there was also a time when Ikea badly misjudged an idea. Inflatable Furniture. This couch is considered to be the biggest failure in the company's history. Get ready for an unbelievable product launch disaster, devastating miscalculations and a lot of wasted potential. The inflatable couch might not have been Ikea's best product idea ever. At the same time it can be good to be innovative and try things out. Maybe you have a great idea you'd like to implement one day. If so, Shopify might be able to help you with that. Shopify makes it easier than ever to sell your products online. You can create your professional online shop in simple steps. So you can spend most of your time on your core business. We've been running a sustainable clothing brand called cultureculture since 2018. Shopify has been an amazing partner along the way. The website editor provides a canvas for endless design possibilities. The dashboard offers valuable insights into your finances, inventory and client base. You can also integrate your shop into most social media platforms and even use it for sales in physical stores. If you have an idea that you would like to pursue, visit shopify.com/fern and take the first step towards your own business. This is Jan Dranger, a Swedish furniture designer. After his studies in the 70s, he founded the company Innovator, together with the designer Johan Huldt. They introduce Sweden to inflatable chairs and mattresses. But the products keep losing air, and the business fails. Dranger doesn’t give up though. He keeps improving his products for years. In 1995, he finally gets a second chance. He gets a meeting with IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad. In Kamprad's summer house near Älmhult, Dranger presents his revolutionary furniture concept. And honestly .. at first glance his idea does sound quite brilliant. Couches can be quite heavy and bulky - especially when you have to carry them up several floors during a move. So, wouldn’t it be handy if you could just stuff it in a backpack, and inflate it in the new apartment? The IKEA founder is fascinated. He consults his managers. Dranger presents his inflatable products once more. The managers test the furniture pieces, sit on them and .. they love them. They close a deal. IKEA is certain: These products are going to revolutionize the furniture industry forever. They shake hands and sign contracts. Probably they pop some bottles. No time is wasted in the following months. IKEA invests a lot of money in the development - way more than what’s usual for such a project. Just two years after the first meeting between Dranger and Kamprad, the first inflatable furniture pieces from IKEA sees the light of day. The inflatable furniture consumes 85% less resources and has 90% less transportation volume. The material is 100% recyclable. Pretty solid from a sustainability point of view. The product line is called IKEA A.i.r. A.i.r. stands for “Air is a resource.” Well.. The model INNERLIG looks like a regular couch with the respective cover. At the top it says: "Content: Nothing." The interior design revolution is about to begin. But, well, maybe - just maybe - it would have been wise to test the furniture a bit more before starting mass production. The products hit the market and a lot of problems emerge. Customers in the stores start jumping around on the inflatable couches. They are extremely light, so they also get thrown around. They also look quite ridiculous, due to their light weight. The "revolutionary" A.i.r. furniture pieces create issues at peoples homes as well. After you get hold of a couch, you simply need to inflate it. According to the instructions, you can use your hair dryer to do that. For it to work however, the hair dryer needs to be set to cold air. Hot air takes up more space than cold air. So, if you inflate the couch with hot air, it collapses when it cools down. But that all doesn't really matter, since the valve loses air anyway. A comfy sofa turns into a collapsed pile of dusty plastic in just a few days. Yep, since plastic can get electrically charged, the sofas are incredible dust collectors as well. And there's another problem.. If you're a '90s kid, you might remember these inflatable armchairs. In the late '90s and early 2000s, they were an essential in many children's bedrooms. When you sat down they made these intense sounds: Your thighs also got stuck to the plastic when you stood up. It was just great. Ikea's air furniture ultimately failed. Big time. They were too expensive and they didn't work. Many customers returned their dusty plastic piles. The collaboration with Dranger was terminated in 1999. IKEA later tried to sell inflatable pieces for children. That worked better, but still didn't meet expectations. In 2013 - 16 years after INNERLIG - IKEA abandoned the idea of inflatable furniture for good. They just ran out of steam. Some still believe in inflatable furniture to this day. There are many new approaches. The products seem more stable and make use of better materials. But one problem with inflatable furniture remains: We came across IKEA A.i.r. through journalist Trung Phan and the Museum of Failure. The exhibition and the associated website feature numerous product fails. The philosophy of the "Museum" is pretty cool - innovation needs failure. If something doesn’t work, it doesn't mean that it wasn’t worth trying. Taking risks can translate into progress. There are some pretty obvious lessons from IKEAs couch disaster. The story highlights the importance of extensive product testing for example. Two achievements particularly stood out to us: 85% less resource consumption and 90% less transport volume? Damn, maybe someone else can continue the inflatable revolution someday. Apart from that: We would have loved to be in an IKEA store back then. Couches were sailing through the air. Children and adults jumped around on the squeaky, dusty plastic. And amongst it all the stressed out employees must have thought: Holy sh*t, what a terrible idea this couch was.