The billionaire who recycled tea bags and built the world's largest furniture empire
Ingvar Kamprad turned a childhood match-selling hobby into a global retail giant. Known for extreme frugality, he flew economy and drove an old Volvo, yet his life was marked by complex contradictions, including a controversial youth in fascist movements and a fortune that remains shrouded in legal mystery.
Born in 1926 on a Swedish farm, Ingvar Kamprad displayed an early aptitude for commerce, peddling matches, fish, and seeds by bicycle. In 1943, at age 17, he founded IKEA at his uncle's kitchen table. The name itself is an acronym derived from his own initials, the family farm Elmtaryd, and the nearby village of Agunnaryd. By 2008, his venture had become the world's largest furniture seller, defined by a relentless focus on cost-control and operational efficiency that allowed the company to lower prices while expanding globally.
Kamprad’s personal life was defined by a philosophy of simplicity, which he formalized in his 1976 manifesto, A Testament of a Furniture Dealer. He famously avoided luxury, encouraged employees to use both sides of a page, and maintained a reputation for reusing tea bags and collecting restaurant salt packets. However, this image of the humble entrepreneur was complicated by his ownership of a Swiss villa, a large Swedish estate, and a vineyard in Provence. His relationship with wealth was equally opaque; while some reports once estimated his fortune in the tens of billions, his lawyers later clarified that he had transferred control of IKEA to a foundation that barred him and his family from accessing its funds.
The most significant shadow over his legacy involves his early political affiliations. In 1942, at age 16, Kamprad joined the pro-fascist New Swedish Movement, remaining active until 1945. Later research alleged he had deeper ties to Nazi organizations, including recruiting for the Swedish Nazi group Svensk Socialistisk Samling. Kamprad eventually labeled his involvement the 'greatest mistake of my life,' attributing his teenage views to his father and grandmother. He passed away in 2018 at age 91, leaving behind a complex inheritance that included a mandate to develop the sparsely populated region of Norrland in northern Sweden.
Source: Ingvar Kamprad
