Swede Ingvar Kamprad, the billionaire founder of the IKEA retail empire, whose cheap, functional furniture is a feature of homes around the world, has died at the age of 91.
As much of a national symbol as pop group ABBA and tennis ace Bjorn Borg, IKEA helped to cement the image of Swedes as practical, egalitarian and unsnobbish.
Born on March 30, 1926, in southern Sweden, Kamprad started selling matches to neighbors at the age of five and soon expanded his range to include seeds, Christmas tree decorations, pencils and ball-point pens.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He founded IKEA in 1943 when he was just 17, but did not hit gold until 1956, when the company introduced flat-pack furniture.
The idea came to him as he watched an employee taking the legs off a table to fit it into a customer’s car and realized that saving space meant saving money.
Always looking to cut costs, Kamprad bought much of IKEA’s furniture from then-communist Poland in the 1960s. He eschewed formal business suits, dressed in well-worn clothes and in later years drove an old Volvo.
Outlining the IKEA philosophy in his Testament of a Furniture Dealer in 1976, Kamprad said wasting resources was “a mortal sin.”
“We do not need fancy cars, posh titles, tailor-made uniforms or other status symbols. We rely on our own strength and our own will,” he said, in what was meant to be the company’s manifesto.
Clever design and modest prices coupled with appealing styles quickly caught on and IKEA’s warehouse-like stores now sell everything from TVs to fitted kitchens.
The company’s revenues were more than 38 billion euros (US$47.2 billion) last year and the IKEA annual catalogue is said to be more widely read than the Bible.
Despite his success in building the IKEA business, Kamprad was a controversial figure.
He was forced to apologize for his time as a member of the New Swedish Movement, a nationalist, far-right group that supported fascist parties around Europe, in the 1940s.
His decision to live abroad, mainly in Switzerland, to avoid Sweden’s high income taxes was also widely criticized.
Kamprad returned to Sweden in 2014 after a reorganization of IKEA’s complex ownership slashed his tax bill and left him with little formal influence.
The Forbes rich list, which once put him as the world’s 11th richest man, has dropped him from its rankings.
Swedes took his plain-spoken style — as well as his furniture — to heart, voting him the top entrepreneur of all time in 2014.
MORE VISITORS: The Tourism Administration said that it is seeing positive prospects in its efforts to expand the tourism market in North America and Europe Taiwan has been ranked as the cheapest place in the world to travel to this year, based on a list recommended by NerdWallet. The San Francisco-based personal finance company said that Taiwan topped the list of 16 nations it chose for budget travelers because US tourists do not need visas and travelers can easily have a good meal for less than US$10. A bus ride in Taipei costs just under US$0.50, while subway rides start at US$0.60, the firm said, adding that public transportation in Taiwan is easy to navigate. The firm also called Taiwan a “food lover’s paradise,” citing inexpensive breakfast stalls
US PUBLICATION: The results indicated a change in attitude after a 2023 survey showed 55 percent supported full-scale war to achieve unification, the report said More than half of Chinese were against the use of force to unify with Taiwan under any circumstances, a survey conducted by the Atlanta, Georgia-based Carter Center and Emory University found. The survey results, which were released on Wednesday in a report titled “Sovereignty, Security, & US-China Relations: Chinese Public Opinion,” showed that 55.1 percent of respondents agreed or somewhat agreed that “the Taiwan problem should not be resolved using force under any circumstances,” while 24.5 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” disagreed with the statement. The results indicated a change in attitude after a survey published in “Assessing Public Support for (Non)Peaceful Unification
PLUGGING HOLES: The amendments would bring the legislation in line with systems found in other countries such as Japan and the US, Legislator Chen Kuan-ting said Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷) has proposed amending national security legislation amid a spate of espionage cases. Potential gaps in security vetting procedures for personnel with access to sensitive information prompted him to propose the amendments, which would introduce changes to Article 14 of the Classified National Security Information Protection Act (國家機密保護法), Chen said yesterday. The proposal, which aims to enhance interagency vetting procedures and reduce the risk of classified information leaks, would establish a comprehensive security clearance system in Taiwan, he said. The amendment would require character and loyalty checks for civil servants and intelligence personnel prior to
The China Coast Guard has seized control of a disputed reef near a major Philippine military outpost in the South China Sea, Beijing’s state media said, adding to longstanding territorial tensions with Manila. Beijing claims sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea and has waved away competing assertions from other countries as well as an international ruling that its position has no legal basis. China and the Philippines have engaged in months of confrontations in the contested waters, and Manila is taking part in sweeping joint military drills with the US which Beijing has slammed as destabilizing. The Chinese coast guard
RSS