"The metallic materials from Laine City are indeed valuable; there's still a considerable demand for them outside."

The city official beamed with a bright smile:

"Yes, at your command!"

Play around as you may, but don't joke about Laine City.

Everyone present now is a core member, and none are fools.

Currently, Laine City has two possibilities as the Empire needs them to get moving.

The first is that the Empire is preparing to wage war against other countries.

The second is that the Empire is preparing to support other countries at war.

Only through war can the vast amount of mineral resources we have now be digested.

That's why a diversion plan is needed to provide a specific diversion for Laine City.

For Laine City, which has been guarding the northern border all this time, either scenario represents supreme glory.

...

After confirming the layout of Laine City, a smile finally appeared on Louis's face.

Once on the carriage, Beatrice smiled and said:

"With this, another war machine of the Empire has begun the mobilization phase."

Her gaze turned toward Louis as she said:

"From here on, the task of drawing attention will be left to you."

"Your Mayer Furniture can now go into full operation."

Louis smiled and said:

"Yes, we can finally go all out."

...

The next day, Louis returned to Ense without a moment's delay, becoming Mayer, and began the second phase of the Mayer Commerce Association's plan.

A day later, under the publicity of the Mayer Commerce Association, the third commercial entity under Mayer—Mayer Furniture—was officially unveiled.

Yes, Mayer Furniture was essentially to replicate the previous life IKEA's business model.

In the previous life, many people attributed IKEA's success to its unique geographical advantage.

They believed that Sweden (瑞D) in the previous life was a typical third-type society.

Such a country, due to its good welfare, modernization, democracy, and care for the environment, eventually created IKEA's unique corporate culture and brand culture.

But when Louis was working on his academic assignments back then, he had looked into IKEA's operating model quite a bit.

From a business perspective, what made IKEA successful wasn't just its product design.

Purely from a design standpoint, many of IKEA's designs may not necessarily surpass the domestic Lin Wood Industry's designs.

But every IKEA product strictly adhered to three major principles.

Cost-efficiency.

Communication.

Narrative.

These three principles together constituted IKEA's core competitiveness.

Anyone who has used IKEA products knows that their functionality takes detail into account very thoroughly.

Ordinary furniture companies rarely develop narrow shelving units.

Because compared to the standard large shelving units in most households, such narrow shelving units are too niche and don't make enough money.

But for IKEA, they never lacked these gap-filling types of furniture.

Coupled with an overall design style that is simple and elegant, without too much showy decoration.

Take, for example, a mug IKEA sells, priced at just 2.9 yuan.

Its handle is particularly small, and the mug itself is short, shorter than a typical mug, not very attractive.

It appears to have a noticeable design flaw.

Yet the core reason lies within the cost-efficiency consideration by IKEA.

In many industries, competition ultimately evolves into competition over cost-efficiency.

For instance, domestic brands of Android phones mostly release a model costing around a thousand yuan featuring dual cameras and a full-screen display.

The goal is to use cost-efficiency as a tool to capture the lower market segments.

In many industries, cost-efficiency alone can dominate the market.

In the previous life, the common approach in the furniture industry was to focus on raw materials and distribution processes to cut costs.

Sourcing cheaper, closer raw materials.

Or through technological improvements and the development of higher efficiency machinery and assembly lines.

These approaches, however, have drawbacks.

Products sourced from different places mean it's hard to standardize.

In the previous life, New Hope Milk repeatedly failed because it could not standardize its milk products, resulting in inconsistent quality, halting its upward trend.

And IKEA, chose a very smart approach.

They directly reduced subsequent manufacturing, transport, logistics, and other costs through design control.

Within the rigid constraints of production and logistics, they reduced costs by improving the efficiency of each link, without reducing product quality.

Take the previous example of the mug.

The handle is designed smaller to allow for nesting during packing, saving more space.

The mug was designed shorter as this height perfectly fills an entire container.

This mug has gone through three improvements since its inception.

The first version could only accommodate over eight hundred mugs.

The latest version can accommodate over two thousand mugs.

Purely in terms of transportation efficiency, it has more than doubled.

Every year, among many new products introduced by IKEA, quite a few are not entirely new designs but rather improvements of old products.

Like a bookshelf without legs.

Because for many bookshelves, the legs aren't necessary.

Removing them saves transportation space and eliminates a production line specifically for table legs.

A typical operation of cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

Moreover, to enhance logistics efficiency, IKEA furniture does not provide assembly services.

They are all sold disassembled into parts.

Clearly, compared to finished furniture, unassembled parts save more transportation space.

Here comes the question.

Does such assembly-required furniture reduce the user experience?

After all, assembling furniture isn't an easy task.

This brings us to IKEA's second principle in furniture design, the Communication Principle.

Cognitive psychologist Donald Norman proposed:

"The essence of design is communication, using appearance to convey purpose."

Norman believes a good design must immediately make its use apparent at first glance, while incorrect usage is impossible to achieve.

For example, a door that pushes out directly removes the handle so people can't pull it inward.

Then install a metal plate at the handle position to tell people this door is pushed out.

Almost all of IKEA's furniture satisfies this Communication Principle.

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