Billy

Billy (stylised as BILLY) is a bookcase sold by the Swedish furniture company IKEA. It was developed in 1979 by the Swedish designer Gillis Lundgren and IKEA have sold over 140 million units of the bookcases worldwide. Its popularity and global spread has led to its use as a barometer of relative worldwide price levels. Construction The shelf parts are made of melamine-coated or veneered particle board. The edges are covered with plastic strips. The shelves are placed on metal support, the holes in the side walls have a distance of 32 mm. The shelves are available in several colours and finishes and a width of 40 or 80 cm. The bookshelves can be coupled and optional doors can be added. The bookcases are sold in flat-pack form, to be assembled by the purchaser. Billy bookcases are manufactured in factories in Sweden, Germany, Slovakia and China. It is manufactured for IKEA by Gyllensvaans Möbler at their factory in Kattilstorp, Sweden. In 2009, 130,000 bookshelves were produced each week. History The bookcase was designed in 1979 by Gillis Lundgren, IKEA's fourth employee. His initial sketches for the bookcase were done on the back of a napkin. When designing the product, emphasis was given to functionality and flexibility recognising that different homes had different requirements and space availability. Lundgren also believed that the bookcase was an item of furniture that consumers may later wish to add additional capacity to as their collections expanded, and wanted to ensure his design was "attractive and timeless" so that the design would remain on sale and didn't fall out of fashion. The name Billy was chosen by Lundgren after an IKEA advertising manager named Billy Liljedahl stated that he wanted "a proper bookcase just for books" to be designed.