Fifth Spot: Ingvar Kamprad
Ingvar Kamprad (born March 30, 1926)
is an industrialist from Sweden. He founded IKEA, the home
furnishing retail chain, in 1943.
In 2008, Ingvar Kampard,
managed to hold onto much of his fortune, bucking the trend of
other billionaires' multi-billion dollar losses and pushing him
up two places in the list of richest men.
Fortune |
Business |
Country |
Status |
22 Billion |
Retailing |
Sweden |
Married, 4 children
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Ingvar began to develop a business as a young boy, selling
matches to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that 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 ball-point pens and pencils.
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When Ingvar was 17, his
father gave him a gift for succeeding in his studies.
He used this gift to establish what has grown into IKEA.
The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials
of his name plus those of Elmtaryd, the family farm where
he was born; and Agunnaryd, a nearby village in the province
of Småland.
Ingvar has admitted his dyslexia played a large part
in the inner workings of the company. For example, the
Swedish-sounding names of the furniture found at IKEA
originally served as names chosen by Kamprad because
he had difficulty remembering stock keeping units. (wiki)
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