#104 Ingvar Kamprad (IKEA)

**David Senra** (0:00)
Imagine one of the coldest little countries in the world. Think of the most barren part of that country. See in front of you a godforsaken place deep in the wild forests. This book is about a man who grew up in this harsh environment, which was to mark his whole life and fundamentally color the philosophy with which he built his vast empire, consisting of thousands of employees and millions of customers all over the world.
The man is Ingvar Kamprad, furniture dealer. He aims to give his firm eternal life.
It's a long way to the country where an empire was built. Here, where he was born, loneliness, silence, and reserve prevail. The cottages have always been small. Survival has never been taken for granted.
In this stony silence, this harsh moraine and morality, the dream of Ikea first grew. For everything requires its special soil.
This is where the rough outline of the whole concept began to be written by a dyslexic boy on a farm.
Two empty hands, the myth says. He built an empire from nothing.
But what are two empty hands? And what is really meant by nothing? Do love and encouragement, innate energy, desire for revenge, imagination and curiosity all count for nothing?
Of course they count.
This is not a book about a man starting out empty handed. On the contrary, it is a book about a man with his hands full of resolute dreams, a heart tormented by inadequacy and self-pity, and a stubborn and inquisitive enterprise.
A strange mixture of a social animal and an eccentric. The book is equally about a firm in which he realized and through which he lived out all these circumstances, for good or bad.
Objections may well arise to the idea of summarizing an outstanding and natural genius so simply, or the elevation of the work of an incorrigible capitalist, so restlessly obsessed by the lure of profit and power that he used a thousand tricks to endow his creation with eternal life.
Others will recognize themselves, for all of us bear within us the embryo of a miracle.
All right, so that is from, that's an excerpt from the book that I read this week and the one I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Leading By Design, The Ikea Story, and it was written by Bertil Torekull.
Okay, so two quick things before I jump into the rest of the book. One, I want to tell you how I discovered this book. I stumbled upon this online discussion where people were trying to figure out what is the largest company in the world that's owned by a single individual. And because these companies are private, it's really hard to know the accurate answer, but there's a good chance that Ingvar Kamprad was that person. He founded Ikea at 17 years old, and before he died, he died in 91, I think in 2018, Bloomberg put his estimated net worth around $58 billion.
Okay, so does that peak my interest? Like, that's a really interesting question. Then I started looking for books on Ingvar Kamprad, and I found one where he worked. This is essentially, it's not written by him, but it's essentially an autobiography. A large portion of this book are direct quotes from Ingvar. Okay, the second thing is, I enjoyed the book so much, I'm going to have a hard time containing my excitement today. So I'm going to try not to jump out of my chair. I'm going to try not to knock my big head into the microphone, but I can't make that promise, because I absolutely fell in love with this book. All right, so let me just jump right into it.
I'm going to start a little bit about his early life. And there's a lot in the book about his early life. I'm only going to pick out a few of these, just so as a way for you to understand, like, there's certain experiences you have as a young person that you're going to keep with you throughout your life. So I want to try to highlight what I perceive those to be in Ingvar's life. Okay, so first he says he's describing his father here. His family, just to give you some background, his family, they're German. They wind up emigrating into desolate farmland in Sweden back in the early 1900s. All right, so he says, he's talking to his dad now. Only 25, he didn't really want to be a farmer at all. But his mother's word was law, and he became her obedient tool. He talks about his mom. She was an amazing person to whom nothing was allowed to be impossible. Sounds a lot like his theory in life. She soon discovered the poor state of my father's business affairs, so we started a guest house. So one of the things that Ingvar is most well known for is his extreme, extreme frugality. And I think where he was raised in his early experiences probably helped that trait to grow, and something he kept for his entire life. So he says, she started a guest house. We rented out rooms to summer visitors, every room taken except my parents, into which we all squashed together. My mother was a heroine in silence. She contracted cancer before she was 50 She died at the young age of 53 The very thought of it makes me weep.