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Ingvar Kamprad Leadership Essay

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Ingvar Kamprad Leadership Essay
Business Leader Profile

Ingvar Kamprad

Founder of Ikea Retail Stores

Why Ingvar Kamprad?

Does the name Ingvar Kamprad mean anything to you? To most people it doesn’t and it's a testament to the fact that he built up a brand that is so powerful people recognize it immediately, while not tying it into, or even knowing, the genius behind it. The brand? IKEA!

The reason why we chose this business leader is simple, Ingvar Kamprad is a businessman and the founder of IKEA with an estimated worth of $22.5 billion dollars. Kamprad was born in the south of Sweden in 1926 and raised on a farm called Elmtaryd, near the small village of Agunnaryd. He is a great leader and one amazing thing about him is that he went into business early in life, selling matches as a schoolboy and also, very wisely for his age (or any age for that matter) Kamprad took his profits and used them to expand his operations, adding to his small line of goods with decorations of Christmas trees, fish, and seeds. He was learning the operational side of retailing, and he was learning it quickly and profitably.

When Kamprad did well in school, his dad rewarded his with some money, and that was the seed to launch a company he named IKEA. He got the name from his initials I.K., and then added the EA from the name of the farm and the town he was raised in - Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd.

Don't think the idea of a furniture company was brewing in the mind of Kamprad with his new company, he still focused on smaller items, and for the most part look to the business of securing contracts of supplying pencils.

Like in his younger years, Kamprad soon began to expand into all sorts of other areas, including everything from jewelry to male and female accessories. He soon outgrew individual visits to customers and went into the mail order business on the local level, having the milk trucks deliver his products to his customers.

When Kamprad first included

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