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Ingvar Kamprad, the billionaire Ikea founder who turned a small-scale mail-order business into a global furniture empire, has died at the age of 91, according to the Swedish company.
Key points
- Mr Kamprad started off selling matches to neighbours at the age of five
- He founded Ikea on the family farm in 1943 when he was just 17
- Mr Kamprad's personal wealth was established at $117 million
Ikea Sverige, the chain's Swedish unit, said on Twitter that Mr Kamprad died on Saturday (local time) at his home in Smaland, Sweden.
Mr Kamprad founded Ikea on the family farm in 1943 when he was just 17, but didn't hit gold until 1956, when the company pioneered flat-pack furniture.
He got the idea as he watched an employee taking the legs off a table to fit it into a customer's car and realised that saving space meant saving money.
Mr Kamprad formed the company's name from his own initials and the first letters of the family farm, Elmtaryd, and the parish of Agunnaryd where it is located.
Later in life, his name often appeared on lists of the world's richest men, but he never adopted the aura of a tycoon. He drove a modest Volvo and dressed unassumingly.
The retailer is now heading for 50 billion euros ($76.6 billion) in annual revenue.
"One of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, has peacefully passed away, at his home in Smaland, Sweden, on the 27th of January," the company said.
"Ingvar Kamprad was a great entrepreneur of the typical southern Swedish kind — hardworking and stubborn, with a lot of warmth and a playful twinkle in his eye.
"He worked until the very end of his life, staying true to his own motto that most things remain to be done."
Born on March 30, 1926, in southern Sweden, Mr Kamprad started off selling matches to neighbours at the age of five and soon diversified his inventory to include seeds, Christmas tree decorations, pencils and ball-point pens.
Birth of Ikea's build-it-yourself concept
In 1950, Mr Kamprad first introduced furniture into his catalogue. The furniture was produced by local manufacturers in the forests close to his home.
After the positive response he received, he soon decided to discontinue all of the other products and focus on low-priced furniture.
Since then the Ikea concept — keeping prices low by letting the customers assemble the furniture themselves — offers affordable home furnishings at stores across the globe.
Ikea celebrates its Swedish heritage: the company's stores are painted blue and yellow like the Swedish flag and serve meatballs and other traditional Swedish food.
But Mr Kamprad's relationship with his homeland was sometimes complicated.
He moved to Switzerland in the late 1970s to avoid paying Swedish taxes, which at the time were the highest in the world. He decided to return home only after his wife Margaretha died in 2011.
The estate inventory filed to Swedish tax authorities in 2013 confirmed that the couple lived comfortably, but hardly in opulence.
Mr Kamprad's personal wealth was established at 750 million kronor ($117 million), a considerable amount, but far from the sums attributed to him on rich lists compiled by Forbes and others.
Ikea officials have said such lists, which compared his wealth to that of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, erroneously considered Ikea's assets as his own.
Ikea is owned by a foundation that Mr Kamprad created, whose statutes require profits to be reinvested in the company or donated to charity.
The estate inventory showed that Mr Kamprad donated more than $20 million to philanthropic causes in 2012 alone.
In June 2013, Mr Kamprad announced that he would retire from the board that controls the Ikea brand as part of moves to hand responsibilities over to his son, Mathias.
AP/Reuters
Topics: human-interest, people, sweden