IKEA's strange, unique economics can be boiled down to this: survival of the fittest furniture.
IKEA has weird economics, wherein favorite pieces of design get better and cheaper.
There is a sort of evolutionary dynamic at play in the annual Ikea catalog: survival of the fittest furniture.... The company tends to discontinue products that remain expensive. “If they can’t figure out how to make them more cheaply, or retool them or slightly redesign them, it seems like the things disappear.”
One example is the BIlly bookcase. Here's a brief history. Over 41 million have been sold since 1979 (full transparency: we're staring at three of them as we write this), though they sell for widely varying prices around the world, prompting Bloomberg to launch a Billy Index.
Be thankful if you're in Slovakia, where Ikea's iconic Billy bookcase is the cheapest among almost 50 countries surveyed by Bloomberg. The price of $39.35 (when converted from the local currency) is less than half the cost in Egypt. The north African nation is the most expensive on the list, at $101.55.
Related: If you enjoy the Billy Index, you'll love the Economist's Big Mac Index.