The term unfinished furniture can often be applied to Flat-Pack-Furniture, or also known as Ready–To-Assemble A concept that has been around for many years.

This type of furniture grew tremendously in popularity partly due to the way it can be stored, and this also reflected in the price.

Typically, when you’re in the market for purchasing furniture, you would decide on roughly the type of furniture you require, and then you would go make the rounds visiting furniture outlets to see if any particular piece would be suitable for your requirements.

For the retailer this presents rather expensive surcharges that must be added to the manufacturers price in order to pay for the storage facility, which consequently is then passed onto you, the customer. Have you ever considered how difficult these furniture items are to put in storage, cost effectively, until a prospective client comes along? It’s very difficult.

The next time you’re in a furniture department store, try and take a peak out the back to where they store the furniture that is not out on the showroom floor. You will see an array of furniture spread out, trying to compensate for the different sizes, making it virtually impossible to fully utilize the storage area.

On top of that, most furniture items are way too bulky to be transported back home by the customer in the family saloon. So now you also have the added expense of paying for delivery.

Along comes the flat-pack alternative. There have been a number of companies offering this idea, and most originate from Europe such as Habitat, MFI, and some general office suppliers. But the most profitable of all these companies would be the Swedish company Ikea.

It may interest you to know that this type of furniture actually originated in Sweden, and was the brainchild of a little known draughtsman working for Ikea who went by the name of Gillis Lundgren.

He needed to transport a table in his car, back to his home. The size was proving to be difficult, so he eventually cut the legs off the table, and reassembled them when he got to his destination. He was so pleased with the outcome that he presented his idea to his employers at Ikea, and the company ended up building its entire business around his idea. Thus the concept of flat-pack was born.

This is by no means an advertisement for Ikea, but to fully understand, and explain this method would be very difficult without giving credit to the pioneering company.

Having lived in Sweden myself for 5 years, I experienced first hand this amazing alternative in which to purchase furniture.

Go into any Ikea warehouse and you will see how effectively they manage to store furniture items. Because everything is disassembled & stored in flat-packs, every ounce of storage space is utilized.

Because of the way it is packed, most items will fit in large family saloons that have rear-folding seats. If you have the luxury of a small truck then you will have no problem in transporting any piece of furniture back to your home.

These benefits are all passed onto you that reflect in the price, that conventional furniture could never match.

The only draw back that I see with this type of furniture is that you need to be a little handy in assembling the item, although the instructions included are very easy to understand.

During the 80’s & early 90’s this furniture was renowned for being sold with less than enough hardware to assemble. But nowadays, quality control has improved enormously, and it is now rare for you to find missing hardware, once you get it home. Because of such, this make a great way to go and furnish your home, for a fraction of the cost you’d find in a normal furniture retailer.