Personal Life
Kamprad was born in Pjätteryd (now part of Älmhult Municipality), Sweden. He was raised on a farm called Elmtaryd (presently standardized Älmtaryd) near the small village of Agunnaryd in Ljungby Municipality in the province of Småland, Sweden. His paternal grandfather was from Germany but moved the family to Sweden.
Kamprad has lived in Epalinges, Switzerland since 1976. According to an interview with TSR, the French language Swiss TV broadcaster, Kamprad drives a 1993 Volvo 240, flies only economy class, and encourages IKEA employees always to write on both sides of a piece of paper. He reportedly recycles tea bags and is known to pocket the salt and pepper packets at restaurants." In addition, Kamprad has been known to visit IKEA for a "cheap meal." He is known for purchasing Christmas paper and presents in post-Christmas sales. The firm he created is still known for the attention it gives to cost control, operational details and continuous product development, allowing it to lower its prices by an average of 2-3% over the decade to 2010, while continuing its global expansion. Kamprad explains his social philosophy thusly in his "Testament of a Furniture Dealer": "It is not only for cost reasons that we avoid the luxury hotels. We don't need flashy cars, impressive titles, uniforms or other status symbols. We rely on our strength and our will!" Kamprad owns a villa in upmarket Switzerland, a large country estate in Sweden, and a vineyard in Provence, France. Additionally, Kamprad was famous for driving a Porsche for several years.
While working with furniture manufacturers in Poland earlier in his career, Kamprad became an alcoholic. As of 2004, he stated that his drinking is now under control.
Kamprad's second wife, Margaretha Kamprad-Stennert, died from an undisclosed disease in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Ingvar Kamprad
Famous quotes related to personal life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To ‘see the light’ too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters ‘woman’s peculiar sphere,’ her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)