The founder was born in 1926 and exhibited an entrepreneurial spirit from a young age. He formed IKEA at age 17.
【國際中心╱綜合外電報導】瑞典傳奇企業家、宜家家居（IKEA）創辦人坎普拉前天於瑞典家中睡覺時安詳離世，享壽91歲。IKEA昨天對坎普拉的死訊發表聲明稱，「他的家人和全球IKEA員工都會懷念他」。
坎普拉在瑞典發跡，1973年為了避稅搬到瑞士，2014年才搬回瑞典南部的斯莫蘭（Smaland）。他從小就有生意天份，5歲時就懂得買回大批火柴，再分開轉賣給鄰居賺錢，隨後也賣種子、聖誕樹飾品、鉛筆和原子筆，年僅17歲（1943年）時創辦IKEA，但直到1950年，公司專門銷售組合家具才開始獲利。
坎普拉在瑞典發跡，1973年為了避稅搬到瑞士，2014年才搬回瑞典南部的斯莫蘭（Smaland）。他從小就有生意天份，5歲時就懂得買回大批火柴，再分開轉賣給鄰居賺錢，隨後也賣種子、聖誕樹飾品、鉛筆和原子筆，年僅17歲（1943年）時創辦IKEA，但直到1950年，公司專門銷售組合家具才開始獲利。
據稱，坎普拉看到員工送貨時為了把家具塞進車子，把桌腳拆卸下來，他突然領悟到節省空間就是省錢，於是開創「扁平封裝」（flat pack）的組合家具，聰明的設計也簡化自行組裝的工序，使生意蒸蒸日上，如今宜家分店遍佈全球各大城市，年營收約500億歐元（約1.8兆元台幣）。
坎普拉1986年卸下公司執行長，2013年退出董事會。宜家稱坎普拉「就是典型的瑞典南部人，勤奮、倔強、眼神中帶有溫情與調皮的光芒」。坎普拉雖是億萬富豪，生活仍然簡樸，一輛富豪（Volvo）舊車開了20年才換，出外搭飛機愛坐經濟艙，去餐廳會把調味包拿回家用，平時買二手衣服穿，更喜歡在商店快打烊前才去撿便宜，他也常在自家IKEA餐廳用餐。
坎普拉1986年卸下公司執行長，2013年退出董事會。宜家稱坎普拉「就是典型的瑞典南部人，勤奮、倔強、眼神中帶有溫情與調皮的光芒」。坎普拉雖是億萬富豪，生活仍然簡樸，一輛富豪（Volvo）舊車開了20年才換，出外搭飛機愛坐經濟艙，去餐廳會把調味包拿回家用，平時買二手衣服穿，更喜歡在商店快打烊前才去撿便宜，他也常在自家IKEA餐廳用餐。
Ingvar Kamprad, a Swedish entrepreneur who hid his fascist past and became one of the world’s richest men by turning simply-designed, low-cost furniture into the global Ikea empire, died on Saturday at his home in Smaland, Sweden. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by the company in a statement on Sunday.
He grew up on a farm in the lake-dotted province of Smaland, in southern Sweden, a dyslexic boy who milked cows and found it hard to concentrate in school. His family was poor, and he earned money selling matches and pencils in villages. At 17, he registered his mail-order business in household goods, calling it Ikea, formed of his initials and those of his farm, Elmtaryd, and village, Agunnaryd.
Over the next seven decades, Mr. Kamprad built Ikea into the world’s largest furniture retailer — an archipelago of more than 350 stores in 29 countries across Europe, North America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia, with sales of 38.3 billion euros ($47.6 billion), more than 930 million store visits and 210 million recipients of catalogs in 32 languages.
It made him wealthy beyond imagining. Bloomberg Billionaires Index listed him as the world’s eighth-richest person, worth $58.7 billion. But his driving ambition led to alcoholism, years of fascination with fascism and, trying to lead his employees by example, into a life of almost monastic frugalities.
All his life, Mr. Kamprad practiced thrift and diligence, and he portrayed those traits as the basis for Ikea’s success. He lived in Switzerland to avoid Sweden’s high taxes, drove an old Volvo, flew only economy class, stayed in budget hotels, ate cheap meals, shopped for bargains and insisted that his home was modest, that he had no real fortune and that Ikea was held by a charitable trust.
It was not exactly so, as reporters found. His home was a villa overlooking Lake Geneva, and he had an estate in Sweden and vineyards in Provence. He drove a Porsche as well as the Volvo. His cut-rate flights, hotels and meals were taken in part as an exemplar to his executives, who were expected to follow suit, to regard employment by Ikea as a life’s commitment — and to write on both sides of a piece of paper.
Ikea was indeed operated through a charitable trust in the Netherlands, and a complex series of holding companies, all controlled by the Kamprad family to avoid any chance that Ikea might be taken public or broken up. It also provided tax shelters and a structure for preserving the company in tact after Mr. Kamprad’s death.
He sought to control his work force, too. In 1976, he wrote a manifesto, “The Testament of a Furniture Dealer,” with biblical-style commandments listing simplicity as a virtue and waste as a sin. Employees were expected to absorb “the Ikea spirit,” to be humble, clean-cut and courteous, not just knowledgeable about Ikea’s products but enthusiastic about its corporate ideology — principles to work and live by.
Mr. Kamprad was, like his designer wares, a studied Everyman. He cultivated a provincial openness: curious about everything, but a face lost in the crowd. He was thin, bespectacled and baldish, with wisps of graying hair plastered down the sides, jowls and a pointed chin. His blue denim shirts and khaki pants might have been a gardener’s, but there was hard individuality in the dark eyes and compressed lips.
While he lived mostly in seclusion, he traveled to Ikea stores around the world, sometimes strolling in anonymously and questioning employees as if he were a customer, and customers as if he were a solicitous employee. He spoke at Ikea board meetings and occasionally lectured at universities. He rarely gave interviews, but made no secret of his alcoholism, saying he controlled it by drying out three times a year.
To millions of Ikea customers and the general public, he was largely unknown beyond the authorized version of his life and Ikea’s success — his “Leading by Design: The Ikea Story” (1999), written with Bertil Torekull. Its themes had been sounded for decades in Ikea publicity and reiterated in profiles of Mr. Kamprad and the company.
Ikea had been achieved, he said, by frugality: building stores on less costly land outside cities; buying materials at a discount; minimizing sales staff to let customers shop without pressure; putting no finishes on unseen furniture surfaces, and packaging items in flat boxes to be carried away by customers for home assembly (instructions provided).
In 1994, the Stockholm newspaper Expressen uncovered Mr. Kamprad’s name in the archives of Per Engdahl, a Swedish fascist who had recently died. They showed Mr. Kamprad had joined Mr. Engdahl’s fascist movement in 1942, and had attended meetings, raised funds and recruited members. Even after the war’s end in 1945, he remained close to the leader. In a 1950 letter to Mr. Engdahl, Mr. Kamprad said he was proud of his involvement.
Mr. Kamprad responded humbly to the disclosures. In a message to his employees, he said his fascist activities were “a part of my life which I bitterly regret,” and “the most stupid mistake of my life.” He said he had been influenced by his German grandmother, who fled the Sudetenland before World War II, and that he had been drawn to Mr. Engdahl’s vision of “a non-Communist, socialist Europe.”
For Swedes, the revelations reawakened disquieting memories of World War II. While Sweden was officially neutral, German troops had traveled across the country from occupied Norway, and an unknown number of Swedes were Nazi sympathizers. After the disclosures, Jewish groups called for a boycott of Ikea, but its business suffered little, if at all, and Mr. Kamprad soon returned to themes of frugality.
“Well, I’m known as a very thrifty person, and the stores are meant for people like me,” he told The New York Times in 1997 when asked about his contributions to the culture of Ikea. “I don’t fly first class on the airplanes, and the stores’ executives don’t either.”
Ingvar Feodor Kamprad was born in Pjatteryd, Sweden, on March 30, 1926. He attended local schools and studied business in Goteborg. He founded Ikea in 1943, using money his father gave him for chores to register his mail-order business.
In 1950, he married Kerstin Wadling. They had a daughter, Annika, and divorced in 1960. In 1963, he married Margaretha Sennert. They had three sons, Peter, Jonas and Mathias. His second wife died in 2011.
In 1953, he opened a showroom in Almhult; in 1958, it became the first Ikea store. In the 1960s, Ikeas opened in Stockholm, elsewhere in Sweden, as well as Denmark and Norway. Alarmed by the company’s growing sales, its competitors organized a boycott by Ikea’s suppliers, but it backfired: Mr. Kamprad went to Poland for materials and manufacturing, which cut costs further.
In the 1970s, Ikeas opened in Switzerland and Canada. In 1985, the first Ikea in the United States opened near Philadelphia. In the 1990s, Ikea became popular across Eastern Europe, and by 2000, there were Ikeas in Russia and China. The company owned the vast majority of its stores, though about 10 percent were franchise operations.
In 1976, Mr. Kamprad moved to Switzerland. In 1982, he transferred control to the Dutch foundation, and in 2013 he stepped down from the board of Inter Ikea Group, a key company within the business, and named his youngest son, Mathias, as its chairman. His other two sons also held key positions. Mr. Kamprad announced his retirement in 1986, but continued traveling to his stores and making major decisions.
“I see my task as serving the majority of people,” he told Forbes in 2000. “The question is, how do you find out what they want, how best to serve them? My answer is to stay close to ordinary people, because at heart I am one of them.”
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