Ikea's Largest Recall In Recent History Cost The Company A Ton Of Money

When you think of the Swedish furniture outlet Ikea, you may picture a magical land of meatballs and lingonberry soda, but the company is far from perfect. Ikea is a source of affordable and modern furniture, with its "As-is" section offering increasingly low-cost options for shoppers. Despite its cost-effective business model, the company has not gone without its periods of trouble, and a recall in the mid-2010s cost it more than just money.

Even with looming tariffs threatening Ikea's profitability in the 2025 fiscal year, Ikea executives are still probably relieved to be past the particularly messy period the company went through in 2016. During this time, Ikea was forced to recall nearly 29 million units of its Malm dresser models. The Malm dresser was a piece of furniture made of chipboard that was ultimately linked to the deaths of several children across the United States. The main cause of these tragedies was that the dressers would tip over if weight was placed on an open drawer, and several children suffocated after the dressers fell on them. The recall, while not as financially damaging as the 2008 motor recall, held massive second-order consequences and likely informed concrete policy change by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

The Malm tipping incidents resulted in the tragic suffocation deaths of several small children and prompted the Swedish company to pay out $50 million in damages to several affected families. That settlement was just the beginning for Ikea, though, as an investigation and following reports showed that the Malm failed to meet basic CPSC standards. In response, Ikea offered to collect the recalled dressers at no cost to owners and refund them for the purchase, or have the products anchored into customers' walls for further security. But even years later, families and organizations continued to demand Ikea work harder to get the word out about its dangerous dressers — and for good reason.

In May 2017 — months after the initial 2016 recall — another child died after his family wasn't notified about the dangers. Following this death, Ikea was mandated to pay another $46 million to the child's family. This death uncovered the ineffective nature of the recall, with Ikea telling owners to anchor the Malm to the wall as a safety precaution instead of returning it. As Consumer Reports pointed out in 2020, this settlement sent a clear sign to major corporations everywhere about how essential properly recalling products can be for public safety. In 2023, the CPSC instated new standards for the amount of weight dressers should be able to support with a drawer open, so hopefully Ikea's recall will be the last of its kind to cause such immense tragedy.