Ingvar Kamprad is the founder of IKEA, a retail chain that has existed for over sixty years and is well known internationally for its classy minimalist furniture designs and do it yourself kits allowing people to save by assembling things at home. He is a multibillionaire and one of the top ten wealthiest people in the world.
Ingvar Kamprad was born at a small family farm called Elmtaryd in southern Sweden in the year 1926. His birthday is the 30th of March. Ingvar Kamprad showed interest in business as a boy, when he bought small items like matches, fish and writing implements at low prices in bulk and sold them for a higher price individually while riding around on his bike. Ingvar Kamprad founded what would become IKEA at the age of seventeen. The name IKEA came from his initials plus the first letters of the farm where he was born and the village where he spent his childhood. IKEA was originally an expansion into mail order of the simple business he had done as a kid. In 1947, he started selling furniture, and was so successful that by 1951 he abandoned all other products. IKEA's approach to furniture, with sleek minimalist designs and compact do it yourself packaging became an international sensation. The company went on to open over two hundred stores in thirty one countries, and Ingvar Kamprad became one of the world's richest men.
As of early 2007 Ingvar Kamprad continues to control IKEA through a complicated ownership structure, although he is not currently acting as the president of IKEA. Over the past five years he has regularly appeared near the top of Forbes magazine's list of the richest people in the world, and has occasionally been called the richest man in the world depending on the year to year fluctuation of currencies. He has lived primarily in Epalinges, Switzerland for the past thirty years.