IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, who was worth $40 billion by some estimates, has died aged 91.
Kamprad died on Saturday at his home in Smaland, in southern Sweden, the
chain’s Swedish unit, IKEA Sverige, said on Twitter on Sunday. He died
peacefully following a short illness, it said.
“He will be much missed and warmly remembered by his family and IKEA staff all around the world,” 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,” IKEA said in a press release.
The Swedish entrepreneur was notorious for having been almost comically
thrifty. He was known to be frugal in all he did, including buying his
clothes at flea markets. There are also reports that he always waited
until he was traveling in third world countries to get a haircut, so it
would be cheaper.
Other ways his frugality played out include reports that he had planned
to leave only about $300,000 of his fortune to his adopted daughter
(reportedly , she said she was fine with that). He also drove a 1993
Volvo 240 (although he reportedly also had a Porsche). He left Sweden
for Switzerland in the 1970s to avoid paying his home country’s high
taxes. He often ate cheap meals at IKEA.
It should be noted that Kamprand also claimed that he was worth far less
than the $40 billion Bloomberg attributed to him, or even the $5
billion Forbes said he had–although that was apparently in the context
of fighting his tax bill. One report said he claimed to have about $118
million.
Kamprad’s life story is intimately linked to the company he founded at
age 17 on the family farm. Kamprad, who was born on March 30, 1926, was a
precocious entrepreneur who sold matchboxes to neighbors from his
bicycle. He found that he could buy the matchboxes in bulk very cheaply
from Stockholm and sell them at a low price but still make a good
profit.
From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree
decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils.
He soon moved away from making sales calls and began advertising in
local newspapers and operating a makeshift mail order catalog. He
distributed his products via the local milk van, which delivered them to
the nearby train station.
In 1950, Kamprad introduced furniture, pieces produced by manufacturers
in the forests close to his home, into his catalog. After the positive
response he received, he decided to discontinue all other products and
focus on low-priced furniture.
Kamprad started IKEA in 1950, expanding the small retail operation he’d
set up in his hometown of Smaland, Sweden via mail order–and adding
furniture that would be shipped to customers’ homes and assembled in
order to keep prices low.
“It is in the nature of Smaland to be thrifty,” Kamprad said in an
interview a few years ago, celebrating his 90th birthday. “I don’t think
I’m wearing anything that wasn’t bought at a flea market.”