Ingvar Kamprad

Swedish business magnate (1926-2018)

Fame62.8
Momentum6.0
Sweden rank#236

Source-basedFalling

Fame62.8
Momentum6.0
Sweden rank#236
Founders rank#87
Wikipedia32.1K

Lived 1926–2018, aged 92Sweden

Sweden FoundersFounder

Wikipedia
68 languages
Cross-language footprint
Rank in Sweden
#236
Founders
Era
1926–2018
Aged 92
Known for
Felix möter Ingvar Kam…
2017

Summary

Updated 2026-08-18

He built the world's largest furniture seller from a mail-order operation he started at seventeen, then lived frugally enough that neighbors mistook him for just another retiree.

Biography

About

Feodor Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 at age seventeen in Sweden. Over three decades he grew the mail-order business into a multinational retail empire that by 2008 had become the world's largest furniture seller. In 1976 he moved to Switzerland with his Swiss wife, remaining there until her death in 2011. He returned to Småland in 2014, closing the circle on a career that had reshaped how middle-class households furnish their lives.

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Ingvar Kamprad

Ingvar Kamprad

saidOct 2017

You can do so much in ten minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good.

— Quoted in the October 2017 issue of Men’s Health magazine, page 41.

Ingvar Kamprad

said24 Jun 2014

Most things still remain to be done!

— Quoted by Martin Enthed in "", June 24, 2014.

Ingvar Kamprad

said13 Nov 2012

Nobody can guarantee a company or a concept of eternal life, but no one can accuse me of not having tried to.

— Quoted by Richard Milne in "Ikea’s fiendishly complex construction," Financial Times, November 13, 2012.

Ingvar Kamprad

said1998

We still have a long way to go—or as I have written so many times, and said at the end of hundreds of speeches: We are just at the beginning. A glorious future!

— 1998, quoted in The IKEA Story by Bertil Torekull.

Ingvar Kamprad

said1976