Ingvar Kamprad
Ingvar Kamprad | |
|---|---|
| File:Ingvar Kamprad.jpg | |
| Born | March 30, 1926 |
Ingvar Kamprad (born March 30, 1926) is an industrialist from Sweden. He founded IKEA, the home furnishing retail chain, in 1943.
Biography
Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a gift for succeeding in his studies. He used this gift to establish what has grown into IKEA.
The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name (Ingvar Kamprad) or IK plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born; and Agunnaryd, a nearby village in the province of Småland.
Kamprad has admitted his dyslexia played a large part in the inner workings of the company. For example, the Swedish-sounding names of the furniture found at IKEA originally served as names chosen by Kamprad because he had difficulty remembering stock keeping units (numbers).
Kamprad has lived in Epalinges, Switzerland since 1976. According to an interview with TSR, the French language Swiss TV broadcaster, Kamprad drives a 15 year old car, only flies economy class, and encourages IKEA employees to always write on both sides of a paper [2].
Kamprad is also a self-admitted alcoholic, but has stated that his drinking is now under control. [3]
Controversy
In 1994 the personal letters of the Swedish fascist activist Per Engdahl were made public after his death and it was revealed that Kamprad had joined Engdahl's pro-Nazi group in 1942 and that Kamprad had raised funds for and recruited members to said group at least as late as September 1945. When Kamprad quit the group is unknown but he remained a friend of Engdahl until the early 1950s.
Since the public revelation Kamprad has said that he bitterly regrets that part of his life, calling it his greatest mistake and he subsequently wrote letters of apology to all IKEA employees of Jewish descent. It's believed that IKEA being one of the few retailers to have a store in Israel even though it also does business with the Arab world reflects an attempt to temper this controversy [4]
Net worth
According to Swedish business weekly Veckans Affärer [5], he is the wealthiest person in the world. However, IKEA denies this assertion, noting that since Kamprad no longer owns the company (it's said that it is because he wants to have lower taxes), it should not be included in calculations of his wealth. Forbes magazine continues to rank Bill Gates at #1, ranking Kamprad at #4. It was in the aftermath of the Veckans Affärer article that Kamprad advanced from #12 to his current position on the Forbes list.
According to the German T-Online, Kamprad is the richest in the world, with 53 Billion USD.
As of March 2005, the sliding value of the U.S. dollar put Kamprad ahead as the richest person in the world in another report. In March 2006, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at US$28 billion [6].
Stichting INGKA Foundation
The Dutch-registered Stichting INGKA Foundation is named after Kamprad, and owns INGKA Holding, the parent company for all IKEA stores. The charitable foundation was reported by the business magazine The Economist in May 2006 to be technically the world's wealthiest charity - with an estimated value of at least US$36 billion in 2006 (larger than the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) - but its primary purpose is, by some, believed to be corporate tax-avoidance and anti-takeover protection for IKEA [7]. Kamprad is chairman of the foundation.
Footnotes
- ^ Profile on Forbes Magazine retrieved on March 10, 2006
- ^ "Cheap is good, says furniture magnate" NZZ Online, March 27, 2006
- ^ from=storyrhs "It started in a shed" The Age, July 15, 2004
- ^ "Swedish goulash and sofas whet Israeli appetites at Netanya Ikea" Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, April 6, 2001
- ^ "Who's really the world's richest?" CNNMoney.com, April 6, 2004
- ^ "Number of billionaires surges" CNNMoney.com, March 9, 2006
- ^ "Flat-pack accounting" Economist.com, May 11, 2006