Eighty-year-old founder of Ikea Ingvar Kamprad is to his employees (or co-workers as he likes to call them) less of a boss, and more of a cult leader, bestowing his flat-pack philosophy and designs for a simpler life upon them and the rest of the cluttered masses.
He was apparently lazy as a small child in Sweden. However, when given an alarm clock on his 10th birthday – not the sort of age you expect big life decisions to be made at – he vowed to turn over a new leaf. He destroyed the ‘off’ button on the clock and henceforth rose at 5:40am.
Thus began a lifelong battle with waste – wasted time, wasted money, wasted space. He even tells Ikea staff to write on both sides of a piece of paper.
Rumoured to be richer than Bill Gates, Kamprad is nevertheless frugal with his personal expenditure. He flies economy class, eats in cheap restaurants apparently drives a 15-year old Volvo and tells Ikea staff to always write on both sides of a piece of paper.
Starting his business in a shed, Kamprad sold matches, pens, fish and Christmas cards, among other things, transporting them by bicycle. In the early 1940s he called his company Ikea and began to sell furniture. Unable to fit a bulky table into his car one day, he pulled off the legs and the notion of flat-pack furniture was born.
Stockholm’s first Ikea store opened in 1965 but was beset with problems. A fire in 1970 nearly wiped it out and disgruntled Swedish furniture dealers began imposing boycotts on suppliers who did business with Kamprad.
Unphased, Kamprad sourced even cheaper wood from Poland and in 1976 wrote his dogmatic Testament of a Furniture Dealer, before expanding the empire that brought us the beloved Billy bookshelf and coveted Klippan sofas, to the US and then the world. Now boasting 186 outlets and 76,000 ‘co-workers’, Ikea is more than a multinational – it is a creed that inspires its followers to queue round the block on a Sunday to discover what they never knew they needed. All hail Kamprad!
