The one who made a furniture fortune

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In a quiet and unassuming - yet very large - villa on Al Wasl Road lies The One headquarters. Upstairs in a back office, its CEO and founder Thomas Lundgren sits in a converted bedroom with a balcony through the sliding doors.

This is where he designs the sofas, tables and chairs, glasses, lamps and everything else sold in the popular furniture shops throughout the UAE.

As I sit with a list of questions about how this 47-year-old from Sweden created an empire a firm of American investment bankers have said is worth $150 million (Dh550m), it soon becomes clear it will not go as planned as he goes off on a tangent from the first minute.

"What do you want," he asks. Not in a vicious "what are you doing here?" way but to enquire how he can help.

I wanted to know how the entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist created his empire, which given the wall of shame downstairs - there's a collection of investment request rejection letters - was difficult to get off the ground. Nevertheless, Lundgren speaks with great pride and enthusiasm about The One and how at the heart of it lie his staff, whose happiness he relies on for success.

"My thing is humanology," he says. "We don't call it HR, we call it talent and we want the best in the world. Every company wants its employees to feel valued and grow with them and feel proud, but how do you give them the tools to do it? That's the job of the talent department and what humanology is all about." Lundgren hates the idea of customers as commodities because he believes that treating them as such means firms do not always consider their feelings and it is these feelings that make people spend money.

"People buy something because it makes them feel good," he says. He also believes Dubai is an easy market to tap. "There are so many lousy retailers surviving but if you're not successful in the UAE you're an idiot because you don't need to give good customer service here. However, that's all going to change as customers start to demand a higher level of service," he states.

Lundgren began his career working for Ikea in Saudi Arabia before transferring to Kuwait. But he and wife Eva were forced to flee after the Iraqi invasion in 1990 during which everything except his paintings was taken.

The couple moved back to Sweden for a short time but then decided to come to the UAE. In 1994 the first The One store opened in Abu Dhabi. Having always been creative, and following his experience as a decorator for Ikea perhaps furniture was the obvious route to follow.

But it took him a long time to find an investor willing to take a chance on this young European with a huge ambition. "Letter after letter came back, all phrased differently, but ultimately saying thanks but no thanks," says Lundgren. The husband and wife team started planning what was then to be named The Home Scandinavian

Interiors, but a trip to New York where Calvin Klein Home had just launched made them rethink. Lundgren didn't want people thinking he had copied the idea, yet he also liked the DKNY abbreviation.

After much deliberation the couple came up with THE, which they decided stood for Total Home Experience. Each new store would then be called the next numerical number - The First, The Second... But after realising this would make logos and carrier bags a manufacturing nightmare, they kept it to The One. To this day he still thinks the name is "so cool".

Although he has said in the past he wanted to save the world from Ikea, The One's early days bore more than a passing resemblance to the Swedish store, which is perhaps not surprising given his 10 years with the company.

But Lundgren says the problem was not the idea, but executing it. "It took us 10 years to do what should have taken us two.

"I was so desperate not to be Ikea that it ended up being like it," he admits. "I'm not a business man, I wanted to paint paintings but what I saw in my head 12 years ago is now what people see in the stores today."

He credits open-heart surgery five years ago and his three daughters with giving him the push needed to turn the company around.

He also realised that he was dyslexic through his children and says that's where his creativity came from. "I can draw but am terrible at spelling," he says.

These days, the outlets are not often referred to as stores but as theatres with the staff as the cast and they are striving to become what he calls a "masstige" store.

The aim, as he demonstrates through a diagram, is not to be mass market but to be prestigious with affordable prices. Masstige has the look of prestige goods with mass appeal prices.

The concept has obviously worked as The One now has 14 stores in the Middle East and one in Latvia and is planning to have 99 outlets worldwide by 2020.

The two it had in Sweden failed, but Lundgren is very philosophical as to why.

"I was typical Thomas and found a cool location, but the stores were not aligned with the company and I didn't have good people managing them. They were so far away from the UAE we didn't give them enough support so did a bad job. But we will be back one day and when we do we will be more prepared," he says.

This complacency was not reserved for Sweden, for Lundgren says it is also the reason the company is no longer the number one for customer service in Dubai.

Again, he uses a diagram to illustrate what he means, showing a two-year plateau during which they got comfortable during their "teenage years" and stopped trying. So when does he envisage the next plateau to come? "Hopefully never. I want to keep on going up."

Lundgren is booked to speak at the Public Relations Congress next month but still has no idea what he will talk about. "I might tell them a story," he says.

"I want to sell what the whole PR thing is about but I also hope to rock the boat and tell them the audience something fun so they remember at least one sentence I have said."

Until then he will keep saving the world from Ikea - and trying to change lives through his the Power of One foundation, which is building village communities in Africa. One per cent of all sales are donated to the cause and Lundgren describes it as a "pay it forward" philosophy as he hopes people will tell others who will then come on board.

"The project comes from the heart and it is something we can be very proud of," he says. "How cool is it to change lives?"

BY Aimee Greaves

© Emirates Business 24/7 2008