ZEENAT MOORAD: Ingvar Kamprad, the disrupter who built Ikea
Ingvar Kamprad has died at the age of 91. He was miserly, and a genius and what we would nowadays refer to as a disrupter. He was the founder of cheap, chic furniture retailer Ikea. What Kamprad did for retail, product design and distribution through the Ikea brand was nothing short of revolutionary. The company spans 411 stores in 49 countries. Its catalogue is said to be "twice as widely distributed as the Bible", and the company once claimed one in every five British children is conceived on an Ikea mattress. Kamprad, who wanted to sell smart products on the cheap, pioneered a concept called "flat packing ". Customers buy Ikea furniture in piece form, from warehousetype stores in largely out-of-town locations and assemble it themselves. He got the idea during a catalogue photoshoot in 1953 when the photographer, moaning about a table’s legs taking up too much space in a storage room, pulled them off and tucked them away. To Kamprad, an offering like that would save money on trans...
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