He flew economy class, called his employees вЂco-workersвЂ™, encouraged everyone to dress informally, stayed in cheap hotels and even replaced bottles from the hotel room mini-bar with cheap bottles bought in local supermarkets. Until his death in 2018, Kamprad continued to travel the world to visit new IKEA stores. According to Kamprad, we should all divide our lives вЂinto 10-minute units, and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.вЂ™ When his father complained that Ingvar slept late in the morning, Ingvar got himself an alarm clock, set it for six oвЂ™clock, and yanked away the off button. Throughout his entire helm at IKEA, Kamprad never borrowed money orВ issued a stock.ДЄnecdotes about Kamprad abound. Today, thereВ are nearly 450 IKEA stores spread across the globe. IKEA expanded throughout Sweden, to Norway and Denmark, via Germany to continental Europe, and on to the ends of the world. Kamprad felt he was not just cutting costs and making money, but serving the people as well. The driving idea behind IKEA was, and is, that anyone should be able to afford stylish, modernist furniture. Thus the basic IKEA conceptВ вЂ“ simple, affordable flatpack furniture, designed, distributed and sold in-houseВ вЂ“ was complete. He began selling IKEA products in flatpack form, from his own warehouses. Kamprad was also behind theВ simple, yet revolutionary innovation that is the flatpack. This forced him to design items in-house. By 1955, manufacturers began boycotting IKEA, protesting against KampradвЂ™s low prices. In 1947, he started selling furniture made by local manufacturers. Two years after starting IKEA, Kamprad began using milk trucks to deliver his goods. With it, Ingvar founded a business named IKEA, an abbreviation for Ingvar Kamprad from Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd, his boyhood home. In 1943, when Ingvar was 17, his father rewarded him with a small sum of money for doing well in school, despite being dyslexic. When just ten, he criss-crossed the neighbourhood on his bicycle, selling Christmas decorations, fish and pencils. Kamprad began his career at the age of six, selling matches. They speak of hard work, frugality and egalitarianism rooted in shared poverty вЂ“ values which would eventually enter the IKEA ethos. To most present-day Swedes, the date and the names, in a famously rural region, resound of harsher times, when Sweden was agrarian and poor. Ingvar Feodor Kamprad (1926вЂ“2018) was born in the Swedish province of SmГҐland, on a small farm called Elmtaryd near the village of Agunnaryd. Photo: IKEA Here is the story of IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, from farm life to flatpacks. Ingvar Kamprad (left) with his sister Kerstin in the 1930s.

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