IKEA stays on top because it never stands still. The Swedish furniture emporium is currently teasing its collaboration with Virgil Abloh, co-founder of Off-White and artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear line. It's due later this summer and will feature this kind-of-incredible shopping receipt rug.
Now, IKEA has also announced some equally amazing new collaborations for 2020. These include team-ups with adidas, educational gaming company Area Academy, 3D printing manufacturers UNYQ, and LEGO.
That's right, LEGO. The two Scandinavian brands have yet to confirm what their collaboration will entail, but in a press release they said they've "joined forces to encourage more play".
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"It started with an invitation from the LEGO Group, 'Do you want to play?'. Of course we said yes to this and together we now want to enable more play by triggering play in the functionality of the everyday life," explained Fredrika Inger, Business Area Manager of Children's IKEA.
"At IKEA we first and foremost want to resolve this built in or maybe just perceived conflict that play is messy in a creative, humanistic and playful way. Because we believe more play makes the home and the world a better place.”
LEGO's Senior VP for Product Development, Lena Dixen, added: "In our collaboration with IKEA we therefore wish to deal with the challenge that some parents might have with the – wonderful – mess that play creates."
Could they be working on a new home storage solution for LEGO - or some ingenious way of preventing those pesky plastic bricks from getting everywhere? (I know from experience that it hurts like hell when you stand on one).
Or, could LEGO and IKEA perhaps be collaborating on an innovative new children's play area for their stores? Either way, they've promised we'll be seeing the first fruits of their joint venture "in the next couple of years". Bring it on!
As for the IKEA x adidas collaboration, the two brands are apparently "exploring how sport and wellness can be a natural part of our life at home". Given their respective histories of innovation, it's safe to presume they won't just be making an exercise bike together.