IKEA's lead interior designer for their range of curtains is finally opening up as to how his life changed after joining the popular furniture store.
In an interview with Elle Décor, Mats Nilsson also shared how he became the top interior designer for the company.
"IKEA was opening a store in Saudi Arabia, and they were looking for available people who could move there for a couple of weeks, just to get the store finished. A colleague and I thought it was an exotic part of the world, and it would be fun to work there for a while, so we went. While we were there, we applied to stay on at IKEA in Saudi Arabia, and we stayed there for two years," he said.
Meanwhile, Nilsson revealed that the concepts for each of the stores across the globe very greatly from each other.
"It was interesting to see the IKEA concept in a completely different world, with different needs. All of their references are different than ours, because the culture is so different. For instance, they don't really use sofa as much - they actually sit on the floor. Working with people from that country and surrounding countries with different references was interesting. I had to teach people how to do things, or how not to do things," he recounted.
In other news, Nilsson also worked at IKEA Italy where he continued to work as an interior designer. This time around, he also helped trained newcomers.
A few years later, Nilsson returned to Sweden. After a short while, he was assigned to a branch in Philadelphia.
According to Nilsson, throughout his experience at working at IKEA he realized that passion is the most important driving force one should have.
"Passion is the most important part of work - not just in this industry, but in anything you do," he said.
