RadioOnFire.com - Swedish entrepreneur and founder of global furniture empire IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad, died on Saturday at his home in Smaland, Sweden at the age of 91. He began his company at age 17 as a mail-order household goods business.
Kamprad built Ikea into the world’s largest furniture retailer with more than 350 stores in 29 countries across Europe, North America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia.
The company has compiled sales of $47.6 billion, more than 930 million store visits and 210 million recipients of catalogs in 32 different languages. At the time of his death, he was listed as the world’s eighth-richest person, worth $58.7 billion.
Despite his success, he claimed to live relatively modest. According to him he lived in Switzerland to avoid Sweden’s high taxes, drove an old Volvo, flew only economy class, stayed in budget hotels, ate cheap meals, shopped for bargains. He also claimed that he had no real fortune and that Ikea was held by a charitable trust.
He modeled his company after these same principles. He insisted on building stores on less costly land outside cities, buying materials at a discount, minimizing sales staff to let customers shop without pressure and putting no finishes on unseen furniture. It was also his idea to package items in flat boxes to be carried away by customers for home assembly.
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