IKEA

Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 at age 17 in Älmhult, Sweden — a remote town in the province of Småland. The name was an acronym: I for Ingvar, K for Kamprad, E for Elmtaryd (the farm where he grew up), and A for Agunnaryd (his home village). Kamprad initially sold matches, fish, Christmas decorations, seeds, and ballpoint pens by bicycle to neighbours. He had started his first business at age 5, buying matches in bulk in Stockholm and selling them individually for a profit.

IKEA began selling furniture in 1948. The flat-pack concept emerged in 1956 when an IKEA employee named Gillis Lundgren removed a table's legs to fit it into a car — realising that furniture shipped unassembled would be cheaper to transport and store. The insight transformed furniture retail globally. Flat-pack furniture could be stacked efficiently, required no specialist delivery, and could be sold in large warehouse stores at prices that traditional furniture retailers could not match. The Allen key became IKEA's unofficial symbol.

IKEA opened its first furniture showroom in Älmhult in 1958. Kamprad's concept was radical: a large warehouse store where customers could see furniture assembled in room settings, choose their items, collect flat-pack boxes from the warehouse, and transport them home themselves. The store served meatballs and lingonberry jam — a decision that became legendary. Kamprad believed hungry customers made poor decisions; fed customers stayed longer and spent more. IKEA's Swedish meatballs have since become as iconic as any product it sells.

Kamprad moved to Switzerland in 1973 to avoid Swedish taxes. The company's ownership structure became extraordinarily complex: IKEA's operations were split between Inter IKEA Group (owned by a foundation in Liechtenstein) and INGKA Group (owned by a foundation in the Netherlands), with the Kamprad family maintaining influence through various structures. The arrangement minimised taxes across multiple jurisdictions. Critics called it aggressive tax avoidance; Kamprad called it business sense.

IKEA reported revenues of approximately €47 billion for fiscal year 2024 across approximately 480 stores in more than 60 countries. Ingvar Kamprad died in January 2018 at age 91, having built a company that employed approximately 230,000 people. He had been famously frugal — reportedly shopping at secondhand stores and travelling economy class — despite being one of the richest people in the world. IKEA had been slow to adopt e-commerce, believing the in-store experience was central to its model. After Kamprad's death, IKEA accelerated its digital transformation and expanded online shopping globally. The flat-pack table that Gillis Lundgren had discovered by removing its legs to fit it in a car had become one of the most significant product innovations in retail history.