Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA Founder Who Built the Flat-Pack Furniture Model

Ingvar Kamprad was the Swedish entrepreneur who founded IKEA in 1943 and built it from a small mail-order business into the home furnishing brand now sold through hundreds of stores around the world. He has since died, and the company is now run by professional managers under a franchise structure he set up.

His ideas still frame how IKEA describes itself: low prices, flat packs that customers carry home, self-service warehouses and a written set of company values from 1976 that staff are still asked to read.

Career

Kamprad registered IKEA in 1943. According to the company’s own history, the business first sold small household goods such as pens, wallets and picture frames. The name joins his initials with the first letters of two place names from the part of southern Sweden where he started.

In 1948 IKEA added furniture to its range, among the first pieces a dark brown dining table called RIGA. Because the company was based far from Sweden’s big cities, Kamprad turned to a printed catalogue to reach buyers, and the first annual home furnishing catalogue appeared in the early 1950s.

Low prices made some customers doubt the quality, so in 1953 he opened a permanent showroom in Älmhult where people could see and try the furniture before ordering. The IKEA Global history gives the opening date as 30 March 1953.

During the 1950s the company began packing furniture flat to cut transport costs and damage. IKEA credits the idea to the removal of the legs from the LÖVET side table, and links it to Kamprad and the designer Gillis Lundgren.

On 28 October 1958 the first full IKEA store opened in Älmhult. It covered 6,500 square metres, including a 4,000 square metre showroom. A restaurant followed in 1960, first serving only coffee and cold dishes.

In 1965 IKEA opened Kungens Kurva near Stockholm, then the largest furniture store in Northern Europe. After a fire at that store in 1970, staff set up a self-service area, and when it reopened in 1971 most products could be picked up and assembled by customers themselves.

Expansion beyond the Nordic countries began in 1973 with a store in Spreitenbach, Switzerland, followed by stores in Germany. In 1976 Kamprad set down the company’s culture and values in nine points in a short document addressed to staff, built around the aim of a better everyday life for many people.

By the early 1980s IKEA had stores in 20 countries. To protect the concept and keep long-term independent ownership, Kamprad created a franchise system and ruled out a stock market listing. In 1982 he also founded the IKEA Foundation, which today works on poverty and climate change.

The Associated Press reported in 2013 that Kamprad stepped away from running IKEA Group in 1986. He stayed involved as a senior adviser. In June 2013 he left the board of Inter IKEA Group, which owns the IKEA brand, describing the move as part of a generation shift that had been under way for several years.

After his death, IKEA called him “one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century”.

Roles

• Founder of IKEA (1943).
• Head of the IKEA business until 1986, according to the Associated Press.
• Founder of the IKEA Foundation (1982).
• Member of the board of Inter IKEA Group until June 2013.
• Senior adviser to the foundation that owns IKEA Group, for the rest of his life.

Key Achievements

The flat pack and self-assembly

Packing furniture flat cut shipping costs and breakage and let IKEA store goods in large warehouses. Combined with the self-service model introduced after 1970, it shifted assembly and transport to the buyer and allowed lower prices.

The catalogue and the showroom

The printed catalogue let a company in a small Swedish town sell across the country, and the showroom answered doubts about quality. Both became fixed parts of the IKEA model for decades. The 1958 store in Älmhult, the first built to that model, has housed the IKEA Museum since 2016, where former products and company history are on show.

Moving beyond Scandinavia

The 1973 store in Switzerland was the first step outside the Nordic region. By the early 1980s, less than a decade later, the brand was present in 20 countries, and stores followed in many more markets in the decades after.

• 1958: first IKEA store, Älmhult.
• 1965: Kungens Kurva near Stockholm.
• 1973: Spreitenbach, Switzerland.
• Early 1980s: stores in 20 countries.

An ownership model without a stock listing

Kamprad chose franchising over a public listing so that the brand would stay independent over the long term. Today 13 franchisee groups run IKEA stores under agreements with Inter IKEA Systems.

A written set of company values

The 1976 document set out nine points on culture and values. IKEA says it has never been revised and that co-workers still read it.

The Company in Numbers

• IKEA retail sales, financial year 2025 (to 31 August 2025): 44.6 billion euros (2024: 45.1 billion euros).
• Store visits, financial year 2025: 915 million.
• Online share of sales, financial year 2025: 28 percent.
• New sales locations opened in financial year 2025: 66.
• Co-workers across the IKEA franchise system, financial year 2025: 222,000.
• Franchisee groups: 13 (2025).
• Stores: more than 500 in 63 markets (IKEA Global, 2026).
• People working with IKEA, including suppliers’ staff: about one million (IKEA US heritage page).

In the Kingdom, IKEA lists stores in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dhahran and Madinah on its Saudi Arabia website. Other founder-led retailers profiled by The Saudi Times include Walmart’s Sam Walton. Among later IKEA executives, Anders Dahlvig, chief executive from 1999 to 2009, went on to join the board of H&M.

In Their Own Words

“Why are beautiful products only made for a few buyers? It must be possible to offer good design and function at low prices,” Kamprad is quoted as saying on the IKEA heritage page.

In the 1976 values document, quoted by IKEA Global, he described the company’s aim as “To contribute to a better everyday life for the many people.”

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