Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, has died, the company has announced.
"The founder of IKEA and one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century, Ingvar Kamprad, has passed away at the age of 91," the company announced on its Instagram account. He died peacefully at home, the company said.
The frugal billionaire, who was once listed as the eleventh-richest person in the world, started IKEA in 1943 when he was 18 years old. Over his lifetime built it into the world's largest and most influential furniture retailer, with sales of around ?36 billion in 2016 through stores in 49 countries.
IKEA brought contemporary design to the masses and revolutionised product design, manufacturing and distribution. The firm was named the most newsworthy force in global design by Dezeen late last year, when it topped Dezeen Hot List. Kamprad was notoriously frugal, turning up to meetings with documents in plastic bags according to people who met him, and buying clothes from second-hand stores. He was also a Nazi sympathiser in his early life and spent several decades living as a tax exile.
Kamprad was born in Småland, southern Sweden in 1926 and raised on a farm. He started selling matches to neighbours when he was five and soon expanded to seeds, greeting cards and Christmas decorations, according to IKEA's website.
He named his company by the acronym IKEA after the initials of his name plus Elmtaryd, the name of the farm, and Agunnaryd, the nearest vil...