Zoomly Talk About Ingvar Kamprad, the IKEA Founder

Ingvar Kamprad was a Swedish business magnate best known for founding IKEA, a multinational retail company specialising in furniture. He lived in Switzerland from 1976 to 2014. Kamprad began to develop a business as a five year old boy. He started selling matches at the age of five. When he was seven he began travelling further afield on his bicycle to sell to neighbours. He found he could buy matches in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, sell them individually at a low price, and still make a good profit.

From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds, and later ballpoint pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a cash reward for succeeding in his studies.

Ingvar attended Göteborgs handelsinstitut, now part of Hvitfeldtska Gymnasiet, from 1943 to 1945. In 1943, when he was 17, Kamprad founded IKEA, selling replicas of his uncle Ernst's kitchen table, and in 1948 he diversified his portfolio, adding furniture. His business was mostly mail order.The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name (Ingvar Kamprad) plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where he was born, and the nearby village Agunnaryd where he was raised.

In June 2013, Kamprad resigned from the board of Inter IKEA Holding SA and his youngest son Mathias Kamprad replaced Per Ludvigsson as the chairman of the holding company. Following his decision to step down, the then-87-year-old founder explained, "I see this as a good time for me to leave the board of Inter IKEA Group. By that we are also taking another step in the generation shift that has been ongoing for some years." Mathias and his two older brothers, who also have leadership roles at IKEA, work on the corporation's overall vision and long-term strategy.

Kamprad died in his sleep of pneumonia at his home in Småland, Sweden, on 27 January 2018 at the age of 91. According to his will, half of Kamprad's inheritance will go to projects in Norrland, a sparsely populated part of Sweden, as he reportedly wanted to develop Norrland and make it possible for young people to live there.

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