Flat Pack furniture was first invented by Gillis Lundgren, who was a Swedish draughtsperson. Lundgren developed the idea when he needed to fit a table into his car. According to reports, Lundgren broke the legs off his table so he could fit it in the car and then reassembled the table at home. He then discussed the idea with his employers at IKEA and the company later built its entire business around the concept.[1] In recent years fully upholstered Flat Pack furniture has been developed and manufactured by Home Reserve, LLC.

Flat Pack furniture is popular among consumers that wish to save money on their furniture purchases by assembling the product on their own and no need for delivery cost. In addition to saving the consumer money, flat pack furniture is generally simple to assemble and requires only the use of simple tools.

Merchants benefit from selling Flat Pack furniture because furniture that is already assembled tends to be bulky and more expensive to store and to deliver. Since the furniture does not need to be assembled in the factory, Flat Pack furniture is also less expensive for the merchant to purchase. Due to these many factors, selling flat pack furniture is a more cost effective method of conducting business.

Flat Pack furniture is typically packaged in a kit form with the pieces packaged in one or multiple boxes. The kit may contain a number of flat parts, fasteners, screws, fixings, and other parts that are needed to assemble the furniture.