Let the youngest ones join the table

All children, no matter where they grow up, have similar needs the first years – for example to try out new exciting food and practice their eating skills. A good way to learn is to watch how others do. These insights guided our engineer John Forsén as he developed ANTILOP – a highchair that lets children and their parents spend time together around the dining table. Along the way, John also learned that one way to create affordable furniture that simplifies people’s lives is doing things a bit differently.

IKEA products are normally developed through collaboration between a designer and an engineer – the designer does sketches and the engineer makes constructional drawings. But with ANTILOP, John went straight to creating a computer model. "I had an idea of how the finished result should look, so I started by calculating where the legs had to be, and at what angle, to get a safe and stable construction", he explains.

A smart construction led to a low price

To get a low price, a simple construction was needed. "I focused on the necessities. ANTILOP is optimised to be strong and easy to manufacture. The fact that we use plastic and steel, and very little of it, enabled the low price", says John. The construction also makes it easy to bring the chair with you whenever it's mealtime out of the home. Or have an extra chair waiting at the grandparents when the grownups are out for dinner on their own.

A low price, but not at any cost

But the definition of good furniture covers more than a low price. The quality has to be there, too. And it is. We take the toughest demands in each region and by regular quality and safety inspections we make sure ANTILOP lives up to all of them. If a new law or standard is introduced we test the chair again. All in all, ANTILOP shows that doing things differently when creating good furniture can be just the way to do it.