Ingvar Kamprad |
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 Ingvar Kamprad
He founded IKEA, the home furnishing retail chain, in 1943.
Ingvar began to develop a business as a young boy. He started by selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm and sell them individually at a very low price but still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ball-point pens and pencils. When Ingvar was 17, his father gave him a gift for succeeding in his studies. The gift was used to establish his own business.
Ingvar has admitted his dyslexia played a large part in the inner workings of the company. For example, the acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name plus those of Elmtaryd, which is the family farm where he was born, and the nearby village of Agunnaryd, which is in the province of Smalandia. 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.
Kamprad has lived outside Lausanne in Switzerland since 1976.
In 1994 it was revealed that Kamprad had attended some pro-Nazi meetings in his youth. He has since said that this was a part of his life that he bitterly regrets, calling it the greatest mistake of his life. Kamprad is also a recovering alcoholic, which he also deeply apologizes for.
Net worth
According to Swedish business weekly Veckans Affärer, he is the wealthiest person in the world. However, this assertion is denied by IKEA, which notes that Kamprad no longer owns the company, which should therefore not be included in reports of his wealth. Forbes magazine continues to rank Bill Gates at #1, ranking Kamprad at #6.
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