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Ingvar Kampard Ingvar Kampard, founder of IKEA (International Furniture Company with current annual 12 billion USD overturn of sales) and one of the wealthiest men on earth, is a classical example of Swedish businessmen. He is a world known innovator and creator of numerous ideas in designing and distributing of furniture. Personal influence of Kampard on whole the structure of IKEA Empire resulted in huge success of its performance at the market. Besides, IKEA has never been corporate property; it is controlled by Kampard family and expands to new markets at the expense of self-financing and brilliant strategies of its architect. Biographers of Ingvar Kampard suppose that a knack for doing commerce was inherited by him from his grandparents.
Future millionaire was born on the 30 th of March, 1926, in a little Swedish city Piatteruid. The family was, actually, of German origin, they were related to Paul von Hindenburg. In the 80 s of XIX century the Kampard's moved from Sudeten Germany to Smalandia province of Southern Sweden in order to find better life. Ingvar's grandfather organized a little enterprise, but in 1897 it was on the verge of bankruptcy and, being not able to pay the bills, old Kampard committed suicide. But his wife, Ingvar's beloved grandmother, who had been left with three children on her arms, managed to recover the business and went on making a living with commerce and farming. A woman with strong will and mind, grandmother had a great influence with Ingvar, because she made him learn how to overcome tough circumstances with the power of strength of character, will and hard work.
Years of the early childhood of Ingvar were spent on a farm called Elmtaryd, located next to the small village of Agunnaryd. Residents of Smalandia province are known as extremely hardworking, energetic and smart, but also they are famous with their incredible greediness and abilities to do good economy in everything. So, commercial talents and entrepreneur potentialities of the young boy have been forming and developing on very proper pragmatic backgrounds. When Ingvar was hardly 5, he gained his first experience in business. He realized that he could sell a pack of 100 boxes of matches, which his uncle brought from Stockholm's market, box by box, by good price with a little profit for himself, which could be reinvested later on. In primary school he used to buy some amounts of matchboxes, pencils or other stationary items by wholesale price and resell them to his class mates three or five times more expensive.
It is remarkable, that his own grandma was among his first and the most active customers. After her death dozens and dozens of never-used pens, pencils, erasers, pencil sharpeners and matchboxes were found packed in her suitcases. In teenage times Ingvar continued and diversified his commercial activities. He did not spend the money he had earned for buying ice-cream or saving for a bicycle, he tried to collect his own capital and invest it into buying more and more of different and profitable goods.
He expanded his business into selling post-cards and Christmas tree decorations, seeds, ball-point pens and stationary, watches, wallets, tights and socks. He enjoyed fishing quite a lot and used to sell the fish he could catch. At the age of 15 Ingvar received some considerable amount of money from his father as a reward for his success in the school. Having joint his own collected financial recourses with fathers money, a young man established his own company.
For about two years Ingvar's small firm has been doing commerce, selling different goods to retail customers in Southern Sweden. In order to develop his business, Ingvar used to work on creating of different small catalogues of his goods in order to offer placing orders by post. Those were the first steps towards the rise of Kampard's career, his first attempts to create own marketing strategies and experience them working successfully for own profits. Ingvar's business has been growing and developing, and in 1943 young Kampard had to make official registration of his company. A new enterprise received the name IKEA, which was formed as an acronym of Kampard's initials and names of the farm and the village where he had been growing up (Ingvar Kampard Elmtaryd Agunnaryd). The company went on growing and soon Ingvar already could not visit every customer individually, so he used to hire assistants and a little milk van to deliver the goods to his customers.
At the end of 40 s, when Europe was recovering after the II World War and restoring dwelling facilities, Kampard got a chance to buy a small furniture factory from Poland and established first IKEA furniture product line. He started producing cheap furniture for people with middle level of income, together with placing orders at the other furniture factories. Not expensive, but reliable and good-quality furniture of Kampard had huge demand, so the strategy of serving for wide public has been totally paid off. During the decade of 50 s IKEA business concept has been forming.
Ingvar Kampard was very successful with his abilities to fight with problems and to transform routine difficulties into advantages for his company. For example, Swedish manufacturers of furniture started boycotting Kampard's enterprise, blaming it in selling furniture at dumping prices. So, Kampard began taking orders for his furniture from abroad, and achieved significant success with that, because his product combined high quality and low price. Kampard did not have University education, neither in marketing or commerce, nor in any other subject, but the innovations and unique business strategies, which he introduced for IKEA, are being studied recently in many Universities of Europe. For example, Kampard was one of the first businessmen, who discovered that it is cheaper to establish production lines and factories in foreign countries, where working power is cheaper. He transferred his manufacturing plants to Poland, where producing of furniture proved to be incredibly more profitable than in Sweden.
Besides, the prospects of expansion into new huge markets of developed European countries seemed to be very realistic due to considerable lowering of the costs of delivery from Polish factory. There is one more miraculous invention of Kampard which helped his company to lower the costs, to decrease prices and gain more customers. Traditionally, furniture used to be produced and built up at the factory. Frequently during the delivery a lot of damages took place, and that resulted in numerous losses of money.
Kampard decided to deliver his furniture similarly to childrens constructor Lego: he used to pack it demounted, piece by piece, so the number of damages during montage or delivery drastically decreased. Managerial strategy and tactic of IKEA always evokes admiration and praise in business circles of Sweden and Europe. In the mid 80 s Kampard gave up with operational administration of the company and hired professional managers to lead the corporation. Nevertheless, whole the business is still strictly connected with Kampard's charismatic personality. Now, after his retirement, Kampard remains the Chief Consultant of IKEA. Kampard has three sons, Peter, Ionas and Matthias, who worked for fathers company.
In 2002 Kampard officially gave the right for ownership of his commercial empire to his sons. Nowadays IKEA has about 200 furniture show-rooms and shops in 31 countries around the Europe, in Russia, in Hong Kong, in Australia and in the United States. Recent plans of the Kampard's are to expand the business to the other post-Soviet states and China. At the end of March 2005 Ingvar Kampard will celebrate his 79 th anniversary.
Since 1976 Kampard with his family has resided at Epalinges, outside Lausanne in Switzerland. Why? Because Switzerland is known with its tolerant tax system. After all, Kampard's economical life-style and love to every crone is legendary. He never arranges show-off receptions and presentations. He himself travels only in second class planes and never stays in luxury hotels.
He accommodates in three stars suits and, if breakfast is included, always tries to eat as much as possible in the hotel in order not to get hungry soon. He takes public transportation to the office, or drives his more than 10 years old Volvo. He considers bicycle travel around Sweden to be the best vacation and enjoys fishing or picking mushrooms. I could not ask for frugality from my people, if I would spend my life in luxury and comfort, he says. Nevertheless, IKEA participates international and local charity campaigns (like, for example, sponsorship of UNICEF) and frequently donates money and other means.
There are some black dots in the biography of Kampard. It has been revealed recently that in his youth he participated in some pro-Nazi groups. Business magnate accepts his involvement in such activity, saying that he used to be under influence of his grandma, and he truly regrets. Besides, he has problems with alcohol, he drinks a lot. But it does not interfere with his participation and controlling of his empire, though officially he is out of business. Annually Kampard earns approximately 350 million EURO.
Lately financial experts of Swedish weekly magazine Veckans Affarer announced Kampard to be the richest person on earth. According to them, Kampard outran Bill Gates because of falling dollar rate. Kampard's todays capital is estimated to be 400 billion Swedish crones, which equals to 53 billion USD, at the same time the owner of Microsoft Corporation possesses only 47 billion USD. But it is more likely to be too very optimistic: much more respectful financial magazine Forums still ranks Kampard as No. 6 in the list of the worlds wealthiest people. There is one known saying in Sweden: Mister Albin Hansson (former Prime Minister of the country), who is a true national leader, created our national house, and Mister Ingvar Kampard designed its interior. It is absolutely obvious that enormous successes, achievements, commercial genius and incredible strategic vision of IKEA creator, his innovative spirit and excellent sense of business should make people transfer the meaning of this saying onto international platform.
Bibliography: Allen, Scott. "Ingvar Kampard IKEA Founder and One of the Worlds Richest Men. " About. 2005. About Inc. 25 Mar, 2005 < web >. Japan, Sergey. "Business on Meanness. " Moscow News. 16 Apr, 2004. Moskovskie Novosti PH. 25 Mar, 2005 < web > < web > "Ingvar Kampard. " Wikipedia. 22 Mar 2005. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 25 Mar, 2005 < web >.
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