Ingvar Kamprad
Feodor Ingvar Kamprad (30 March 1926 – 27 January 2018) was a German Swedish billionaire best known for founding IKEA, a multinational retail company specializing in furniture. He had distanced itself from National Socialism post-WWII. He was married twice and had four children.
Life
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Kamprad was born in Pjätteryd (now part of Älmhult Municipality), Kronobergs län, in Småland, Sweden, to Feodor Kamprad (1893–1984) and Berta Linnea Matilda Nilsson (1901–1956). His mother was of Swedish origin, while his father was born in the German Empire and came to Sweden a year after his birth with his parents. Kamprad's paternal grandfather, Achim Erdmann Kamprad, was originally from an aristocratic German family in Altenburger Land in Thuringia, while his paternal grandmother, Franziska ("Fanny") Glatz, was born in Radonitz in Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to a lower-class family.
Kamprad began to develop his business acumen as a little boy, he sold matches to his neighbors from his bicycle. He discovered that he could buy up large batches of matches cheaply from Stockholm and then sell them individually at a low price and still make a good profit on them. From selling matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils.
- In 1942, he joined Per Engdahl's nationalist and to some degree pro-fascist (broad sense) New Swedish Movement. One year later he founded IKEA, with some corporatist influences. When he left the New Swedish Movement is unclear. He also had friendly relationship with Per Engdahl for some time. In 1994, when the personal letters of Per Engdahl were made public, he publicly distanced himself from the organization, stating that it was the "greatest mistake of my life". A later revealed 1943 Swedish Security Service file is stated to prove membership in the Swedish Socialist Gathering, earlier the National Socialist Workers' Party (Sweden).
When Kamprad was 17 years old, he received a reward from his father to have done well in school. He used the money for the founding of IKEA. The acronym IKEA is made of his initials (IK from Ingvar Kamprad) and the first letter of Elmtaryd, and the first letter from the parish he was born in: Agunnaryd. Kamprad acknowledges that his dyslexia played a major role in how he designed the company.
For example, the names of the furniture were chosen by Kamprad because he had difficulty remembering their inventory number. Kamprad lived in Epalinges, Switzerland since 1976. According to an interview with TSR, the French language Swiss tv channel, Kamprad drives in a 15 year old Volvo, flies only economy class, and encourages his employees to always write on both sides of the paper. Kamprad usually visit Ikea restaurants for cheap food. While Kamprads frugality is well known, it is also an important part of the carefully managed media image that is presented to IKEA employees and the public. It is however more rarely mentioned that he owns a luxury villa in the better parts of Switzerland, has large country estates in Sweden, his own vineyard in Provence, France, and that he had a Porsche for several years. He was reckoned in 2008 as one of the seven richest people in the world, with an estimated wealth of about 31 billion US dollars.
