The Background of Ingvar Kamprad

I’m gonna talk about Ingvar Kamprad. He was born 30th Mars, 1926 in Kronobergs municipality. He’s a Swedish entrepreneur and founder of the furniture chain IKEA. Ingvar founded IKEA in 1943 and the name stands for his initials and address. – Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd. (Write up on whiteboard. ) – Kamprad is currently ranked as one of the wealthiest people in the world. In July 2012, the time script Bloomberg estimated that his net worth was up to 42. 6 billion dollars, which makes him the 5th richest person in the world.

Kamprad was born in Pjatteryd, Sweden. He was raised on a farm called Elmtaryd near the small village of Agunnaryd in Ljungby municipality in the province of Smaland. His grandfather was from Germany but moved to Sweden with his family. Kamprad is very well-known for his “cheapness. ” He drives a 1993 Volvo 240, flies only economic class and encourages IKEA employees always to write on both sides of a piece of paper. Kamprad explains his social philosophy like this: “Testament of a Furniture Dealer”: “It is not only for cost reasons that we avoid the luxury hotels.

We don’t need flashy cars, impressive titles, uniforms or other status symbols. We rely on our strength and our will! ” Kamprad began to develop a business as a young boy, selling matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy matches in bulk very cheap from Stockholm, sell them himself and make a good profit. From matches, he started selling fish, Christmas tree decorations and seeds. And now I’m gonna talk about the history of IKEA.

As I mentioned earlier, Kamprad started selling matches at the age of five and by the age of seven he started selling further from his home, using his bicycle. In the 1940s Kamprad started developing IKEA into a furniture retailer. In the 1960s IKEA started getting bigger and the big products such as POANG and BILLY started developing. In the 1980s IKEA expands into new markets in USA, Italy, France and the UK. In 1990s children’s IKEA is introduced, and in 2000’s IKEA expands into even more markets such as Japan and Russia.

And now I’m going to talk about the qualities of Ingvar Kamprad as an entrepreneur. Well, one thing that I find very important is the fact that he actually shows that even though you’re extremely rich, you still don’t have to live a glamorous life. As I’ve mentioned, he drives an old Volvo and travels economic class. By this it encourages the employees to do the same thing, to live cheap. And this is why I think IKEA’s been such a huge success. You can of course argue that he’s been at the right place at the right time, but I think that’s his kind of spirit that moves the company forward. Thank you.