From child entrepreneur to IKEA founder: The Story of Ingvar Kamprad

 

Ingvar Kamprad was the Swedish billionaire business magnate best known for founding IKEA, a multinational retail company specializing in furniture.

 

Like most entrepreneurs, Ingvar Kamprad’s vision started with a spark – lots of them. In 1931, the five-year-old began selling matches, an essential item in every home. So how did a boy from the Swedish countryside become a teenage founder of a global enterprise?

 

Ingvar Kamprad did things differently from the start. Instead of selling matches for pennies, he should’ve been working hard on his father’s family farm in Elmtaryd. It was depression. Poverty was widespread. People queued for food, for jobs, for everything. Everyone, children included, was expected not to waste anything – not even time.

 

In the Swedish province of Småland where Ingvar lived, the stony land produced poor crops. Farming wasn’t enough to survive. People had to be innovative, creative, strong, and stubborn. Families were thrifty, and many became entrepreneurs to make ends meet, selling homemade goods or preserved foods.

 

Ingvar understood his family’s hardship and wanted to help. But rather than doing farm chores, he focused on helping the family finances. Whether or not his small contributions made a difference, his family did the unconventional and supported their little match-selling entrepreneur. The future IKEA founder’s first customer was his father’s mother.

 

Good with numbers and a quick learner, Ingvar realized he might be able to sell more things. Farmers who didn’t have fishing rights needed fish. Christmas cards, magazines, and garden seeds were must-haves too. To reach as many customers as possible, he rode his mother’s bicycle to farms until he earned enough to buy his own bike.

 

When angling for fish didn’t bring a big enough catch, Ingvar persuaded his father to buy nets for a greater yield. He sold the fish he caught, shared the profits with his father, and put his fishing earnings in a cigar box.

 

Ingvar figured out how to help his customers by creating low prices while still making a profit for his family.

 

At 14, he moved to attend a boarding school nearby. Ever the entrepreneur, he kept a stock of pens, watches, wallets, and belts under his bed. Too young to set up the firm he wanted, his father gave legal consent and paid the registration fee as a graduation present in 1943.

 

So, the IKEA name was born using Ingvar Kamprad’s initials plus Elmtaryd, the family farm, and Agunnaryd, the farm’s parish in Småland. But the 17-year-old IKEA founder didn’t sell furniture – yet.

 

Ingvar continued his business and his studies at college. His future took shape as he realized success depended on the simplest, most cost-efficient distribution from the factory to the customer.

 

For IKEA then, this meant direct import and mail order, mainly of watches and pens. But pens had issues, so Ingvar saw they didn’t have a future either. Like his match money, he saved to invest in something else.

 

Furniture would be something else – offered as a sensible experiment. The post-war Swedish government had built lots of housing and offered home furnishing loans. Plus, Småland had many small furniture factories.

 

When furniture debuted in the 1948 brochure, Ingvar wrote IKEA would offer more if customers showed “reasonable interest.”

 

In the next brochure, the entrepreneur described his focus with the headline “to the people of the countryside.” The IKEA founder refined this into the company vision “to create a better everyday life for the many people.”

 

But who are these many people? They’re anyone, like Ingvar and other frugal, practical Smålandians, who value products with low prices and high quality – things made from being smart with resources and never tolerating waste.

 

That’s how Ingvar Kamprad, the rebel-hearted, clever-minded boy, got started in the business. With humble roots, useful (and affordable!) matches, and the desire to help his family, he would eventually change millions of lives worldwide with home furnishing.

 

"Simplicity and common sense should characterize planning and strategic direction" - Ingvar Kamprad