Ingvar Kamprad, whose initials are the first two letters of the company he founded in 1943 at the age of 17, has passed away at the age of 91. Ikea, which employs 190 000 people and operates over 400 stores in 49 countres with sales of over €38bn a year, is reputed to have "democratised interior design". The Scandinavian design ethic was commercialised and made accessible to millions at an affordable price. The business started as mail order from a small shed in Kamprad's native village. The lazy young man who used his study money to start a business, got the revolutionary idea of flatpack furniture when he saw an early employee take the legs off a table to fit it into a car. He also moved staff to the tills, letting the customers pick items from the warehouse themselves. These were some of the disruptions which, together with low prices, made Ikea into the largest furniture retailer in the world. He has been described as a "Swedish Henry Ford", and his company is responsible for 1% of world commercial-product wood consumption. It has been claimed tht one in ten Europeans alive today were conceived in an Ikea bed.

Kamprad became well-known for his ethics of hard work and frugality, driving an old Volvo and travelling economy class. In order to keep the company off the stock market and out of the hands of competitors or banks, he set up a complicated business empire, dividing Ikea into two parts, the retailer Ikea Group and the owner of the brand Inter Ikea, both owned by foundations and not him or his family. He based both in tax havens and lived for a time as a tax exile in Switzerland. His reputation was somewhat tarnished in the 1990s when it was revealed that he had had close relations with the Swedish Nazi movement in his younger days. He apologised but described it as a sin of his youth. He also admitted to alcoholism, developed while negotiating with Polish suppliers over shots of vodka.

As well as an adopted daughter from his first marriage, Kamprad leaves three sons from his second wife who died in 2011, who all have board positions in the Ikea empire, but no executive or ownership roles.