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After more than 30 years in the IKEA range, it’s one of the most used bags in the world. It’s big and strong, and pretty much anything will fit inside, whether you’re shopping, moving, doing the laundry or going to the beach. An iconic tote bag that has also inspired new creations by everyone from keen DIYers to luxury fashion designers.

Do you have a FRAKTA bag at home? Most people have one or more of these blue classics, and they are used in all kinds of different ways. It was originally made to provide IKEA customers with a reliable bag to carry their new stuff home in. Since then, millions of people have come up with imaginative ways to use FRAKTA. Apple pickers and recycling collectors, parents with young children, football coaches – the list is endless. And it can carry heavy loads – FRAKTA does after all mean ‘to freight’ in Swedish. When the New York City authorities introduced a rule that all dogs on public transport had to be in a bag, inventive owners of large dogs could soon be seen carrying them in FRAKTA bags with holes cut out for the legs.

The origins of FRAKTA can be traced back to the 1960s, when IKEA started selling more and more small home furnishing products at the new IKEA store in Kungens Kurva, Stockholm, Sweden. In 1986, Ingvar Kamprad and his then assistant, Sten Lundén, decided to look at what actually happened when the small items were carried from their shelves and bins to the store exit. At the time, each store had its own solution. The platform trolleys that customers used in the self-serve area were standard everywhere. But for smaller products like tealights, duvet covers and glasses, there were usually only small plastic baskets or bags that were too small for many of the items. Customers had to carry a lot of stuff in their arms, which was heavy, awkward work. Ingvar and Sten noticed that many customers gave up half way, leaving behind a lot of items they couldn’t be bothered to carry to the checkout.

They studied customers and their behaviour in about ten stores, and came to the conclusion that it was, as Ingvar put it, “a deplorable experience”. He later explained that this was what prompted IKEA to make a large bag to carry on the shoulder, hang on a platform trolley, or carry in your hand. Head of purchasing Lars Göran Peterson, or LGP as he’s known at IKEA, was tasked with measuring many of the items in the range that could be carried. This enabled him to work out an optimum size for the bag.

On a trip to Taiwan, Ingvar Kamprad and LGP found a suitable manufacturer. They had specified, for example, that the bag had to be large enough to carry rolls of wallpaper, and sturdy enough for 50 kg. A Taiwanese factory owner showed the men a sample of polypropylene, a material often used for large rice bags. Ingvar and Lars Göran were keen on the idea, but they wanted to be sure the bag wouldn’t break. “We found a woman at the office who weighed about 50 kilos and asked her to stand in the bag,” Lars Göran remembers. “I took one handle and Ingvar took the other. We lifted the bag up, and it didn’t break!”

That was how the yellow bag was born at a factory in Taiwan. But customers had exactly the same transportation issue after paying for their goods, so Ingvar wanted IKEA to make two bags of different colours. One would be sold at a very low price at the checkout so that customers had something to carry their items home in. And Ingvar could see an important knock-on effect as well. “Done right, the bags could be something that unconsciously brought people together, without having any advertising on the bag,” he later explained in a letter. “When they saw one of the bags on the street, at the beach and so on, they would know that they had something in common: a visit to IKEA. With tens of millions of bags in town, this could be excellent publicity.”