Guy Raz

Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how John Gabbert left his family's furniture business to branch out on his own with Room & Board, a national brand that was inspired by IKEA.

Many, if not most, businesses we profile on this show started with an insight that the founder or founders translated into opportunity.

And for John Gabbert, that insight happened on a trip to Sweden.

It was the early 1970s, and on that visit, he walked into a store that, at the time, most Americans had never heard of.

It was called IKEA.

And what impressed John wasn't just the designs he saw, though that was part of it.

What struck him was the whole idea, that a store could design its own furniture, control how it was made, keep costs down, and then sell it directly to customers without all the layers in between.

And when John came back to Minneapolis, he couldn't stop thinking about this concept.

Because at the time, he was working for the family business, a furniture store his dad started called Gabbert's.

Gabbert's was a pretty successful local business.

But what it sold was completely different than what John saw in Sweden.

Gabbard's furniture was the kind of stuff your parents or grandparents might have bought in the 1950s.

But this was the 1970s.

Baby boomers were starting to buy homes and build families.

And John believed that these customers would want more modern designs, more functional and more affordable.

Unfortunately, John's dad didn't see it that way.

And over time, their differences in vision started to create real tension.

And that tension would eventually lead to a decade-long family estrangement.

John walked away from the family business and bought out a small experimental division he had created inside of it.