Vintage photos chronicle IKEA's stunning evolution from mail-order catalog to furniture giant

When 17-year-old Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, Sweden was in the middle of an economic downturn, Eriksson said.

Kamprad grew up poor on a farm near the village of Agunnaryd, so he "needed to make use of everything he had."

This thrifty mindset informed the vision for IKEA: to sell sold low-priced, simple products for the masses.

Kamprad died in January 2018.

In the beginning, IKEA didn't just make furniture. It also sold small items like pencils, pipes, and postcards through mail-order catalogs.

In the 1950s, IKEA's female employees wore the wool ensemble pictured below.

Traveling door-to-door, they carried binders to take down customer orders.

Kamprad published IKEA's first home catalog and started designing furniture in 1951.

Flat packaging and customer-assembly existed from the beginning, which has kept shipping costs down for Ikea.

The new museum is located in Älmhult, Sweden, inside the same warehouse where Kamprad launched IKEA's first physical retail store in 1958.

In the 1960s, IKEA discovered that it could make tables more affordable by producing them from particle board, a material made from wood chips.

Starting in the early '60s, IKEA created items that were painted light, neutral colors with a few pops of color.

This is also evident in the kitchen cabinetry pictured below.

Lacquered oak tables were also popular, starting in the late '60s, Eriksson said.

Couches and armchairs had sharper lines and lots of gray upholstery.

IKEA's furniture in the '70s featured more bold patterns and colors.

Hippie culture largely influenced the designs.

Pictured below is a bright green armchair, which IKEA started selling in 1970.

On the front of this 1973 catalog, IKEA advertised its casual Tajt floor sofa made from denim, a very fashionable material at the time.

While many other furniture companies started coloring their products with darker stains, IKEA continued to produce furniture in lighter shades.

Bright colors can make small rooms look larger.

In 1979, IKEA stores started serving the iconic meatballs fried in butter.

Starting in the early '80s, the brand premiered the Billy bookshelf and Klippan sofa in its stores.

These were the two highest selling IKEA items ever.

Decorative patterns characterized IKEA's products in the '80s, as you can see in this 1980 catalog, which advertised a bright floral couch.

That style was also evident in this sofa, advertised in 1986:

The materials also shifted toward more environmentally friendly metals, plastics, and glass, Eriksson said.

'90s IKEA furniture featured a lot of blonde woods and neutral tones.

This style meant to emphasize function, rather than in-your-face aesthetics.

Starting in 1998, photos of families with young children started appearing on IKEA catalogs more regularly.

However, that minimalist design mentality didn't apply to IKEA's neon-colored furniture for kids, Mammut and Trofast, also born in the '90s.

Moving into the 21st century, IKEA focused on producing multi-functional furniture that could fit in almost any household.

Over the past 75 years, IKEA has made a long journey: from a small mail-order business to the multi-billion-dollar entity.