The FAMNIG story
Storyteller : Anna Efverlund
Country : India
Year : 1997
In the summer of 1997 I was on holiday at my little place in the country. I was up at the top of a ladder painting the house when the phone rang. They wanted me to go to India. Straightaway. One of the factories making IKEA teddy bears (not my design, but so what?) was having problems getting the eyes to stay put. Fortunately, we hadn't had any incidents as yet, but we had had to recall all the products - millions of them! And we hadn't yet found out how to put the problem right. So there were 600 factory workers in India without any work to do. They were all about to be laid off. Anyway, Charlotte Sundstršm and I flew to India and spent a week there and decided we'd get them to produce these soft toys without eyes, or with stitching for eyes, or something like that. And that's when we had the idea for FAMNIG heart. You know, the heart with those wrap-around arms. Right from the start it was a huge success. So instead of the factory having 600 workers without any work to do, they soon needed to recruit another 600 workers to keep pace with demand!
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