<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> This section appears to be slanted towards recent events . Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective and add more content related to non-recent events . (January 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) </Td> </Tr> <P> Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 as a mostly mail - order sales business . It began to sell furniture five years later . The first Möbel - IKÉA store was opened in Älmhult, Småland, in 1958 (Möbel means "furniture" in Swedish). The first stores outside Sweden were opened in Norway (1963) and Denmark (1969). The stores spread to other parts of Europe in the 1970s, with the first store outside Scandinavia opening in Switzerland (1973), followed by West Germany (1974). </P> <P> Amid a high level of success, the company's West German executives accidentally opened a store in Konstanz in 1973 instead of Koblenz . Later that decade, stores opened in other parts of the world, such as Japan (1974), Australia, Canada, Hong Kong (1975), and Singapore (1978). IKEA further expanded in the 1980s, opening stores in countries such as France and Spain (1981), Belgium (1984), the United States (1985), the United Kingdom (1987), and Italy (1989). The company later expanded into more countries in the 1990s and 2000s . Germany, with 53 stores, is IKEA's biggest market, followed by the United States, with 48 stores . At the end of the 2009 financial year, the IKEA group operated 267 stores in 25 countries . The first IKEA store in Latin America opened on 17 February 2010 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic . As of July 2013, the company's presence in developing countries remains minimal . </P> <P> In December 2014, the world's largest IKEA store at 59,000 m (635,070.7 sq ft), opened near the KTX Gwangmyeong Station, located at the heart of South Korea's Seoul Capital Area . It opened the world's fourth largest store (and the largest standalone store in the world) in Goyang, Gyeonggi on October 2017 at 52,199 square meters . IKEA plans to open two more stores of such scale in the Seoul Capital Area, along with a store in Daejeon and Busan by 2020 . </P>

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