IKEA Growing In Peer Pressure

The name of IKEA is closely related to the life of Kamprad, the founder.

The four letters of IKEA came from his name, Ingvar Kamprad, his farm Elmtaryd, and his hometown of Agunnaryd in southern Sweden.

Kamprad had deep feelings for his hometown, and Nordic culture also had a great influence on IKEA's business philosophy.

Kamprad originally sold seafood, magazines, seeds and other daily necessities in the local area.

With the end of World War II, the demand for daily necessities in Europe increased sharply after the war, especially the imbalance between supply and demand in the furniture industry, resulting in high prices. Furniture became a luxury consumer at a time.

Kamprad wants to change this situation. He hopes to make furniture that most people can afford and help people improve their quality of life.

Although Kamprad's idea is good and meaningful, he has encountered many difficulties in practice. The biggest obstacle is the boycott of furniture manufacturers and producers' alliances.

Kamprad was forced to buy products from a few independent furniture manufacturers in Sweden, and to develop new sources abroad, such as Poland.

The combination of peer pressure has become an opportunity not only to "force" IKEA to find cheaper suppliers, but also to let Kamprad accidentally break the price monopoly from the producers of cartels and greatly reduce the price of furniture.

Today, IKEA has more than 1300 suppliers in 53 countries around the world.

In 1965, the first one.

When Sweden opened its doors, everything was in the camp plan. Until 1970, a big fire broke out in IKEA's flagship store in the southern suburbs of Stockholm.

Just when everyone thought Kamprad was doomed, a brand new IKEA store was built again on the ruins.

It turned out that after experiencing peer pressure, Kamprad learned to be prepared for danger and set aside 14% of his annual operating profit to prepare for a rainy day. It was Kamprad's precaution that IKEA was able to reborn.

After the establishment of the new shopping mall, Kamprad faced the problem of shortage of funds, and he urgently needed to reduce the operating cost.

In IKEA's value chain, the cost of raw materials has been optimized to a large extent, so it can only start with management costs.

Kamprad first cancelled the salesman in the store, and then combined the warehouse with the store, thus reducing the cost of pportation and management. Finally, IKEA developed into a new home retail store with self-help shopping, self-service delivery and self-service installation.

This way can greatly reduce the cost of intermediate links and allow consumers to benefit, so it has been popular with customers since the beginning. Until now, self-service retailing is still a unique selling point of IKEA.

IKEA has repeatedly claimed that its ownership belongs to the foundation, not belonging to the founder Kamprad family. Kamprad himself has repeatedly claimed in the media that he and his family do not own IKEA one cent.

But after that, it can be found that the two major operating agencies behind the IKEA group, the Intel IKEA company, and

The ownership of holding companies is not clear. "IKEA does not belong to the Kamprad family" at the same time should be doubted.

In 1982, a foundation called Stettin Ingka Stichting INGKA was founded in Holland.

This year, Kamprad donated IKEA group to the angca foundation.

According to the economist, as the owner of the angca holdings and IKEA group, the total assets of the foundation in 2006 amounted to $36 billion.

Ying Ge holdings is the parent company of IKEA group, which controls the operation rights of IKEA group.

The highest decision-making level of the angca holding company is the supervisory committee, which consists of 6 members, including Kamprad's two son Jonas Kamprad.

The Anglo card foundation comprises two parts: one is the charity Stichting IKEA Foundation, and the other is the Stichting IMAS Foundation, the asset management agency, IMAS, IKEA.

In the five member board of the IKEA foundation, the Kamprad family accounted for two seats, namely, Kamprad himself and his eldest son Peter.

The IKEA foundation has a operative charter which clearly describes the objectives and rules of the foundation. If it is not illegal, Kamprad can make and amend the articles of association as he likes.

In this way, Kamprad controlled the foundation and also managed to grasp the flow of funds in the foundation.

As for why the IKEA foundation was set up in Holland, Kamprad also made a careful plan.

Holland's management of capital flow for nonprofit organizations is quite loose. The Kamprad family first pferred the huge funds of IKEA to the foundation, and then pferred funds to the trust company located in Kuraso through the foundation. As a result of the local law protecting the people in the trust company, it was impossible to trace the ultimate flow of funds.

Another important institution in the kingdom of camp is Inter IKEA System, which is the owner of the brand of IKEA group, IKEA.

All IKEA stores need to pay 3% of the total IKEA turnover to Intel IKEA every year, hire the concept of IKEA, and operators can only operate on IKEA store standard, and can not make any changes.

In 2013, the total turnover of IKEA group was 28 billion 500 million euros, which meant that the royalty rate of the IKEA group was as high as 850 million euros. At the same time, ingenious IKEA company, after ingenious ownership design, helped to secure the money in the bag.

IKEA's parent company is Inter IKEA Holding, which is a company of the same name in the Netherlands Antilles. The ownership of the latter belongs to a trust company located in Kuraso. Because of the local law of Kuraso, the name of the trust company is not required to be announced by the Holding.

As a result, IKEA's annual high royalty charges go to unknown trust companies.

In the board of IKEA IKEA holding, Kamprad, the youngest son of founder, acted as chairman of the board, controlling the whole IKEA company and its capital flow.

Every design in the IKEA kingdom is exquisite.

From the daily operation management of the group to the backflow of the brand authorization fee, Kamprad has firmly controlled the control and cash flow of IKEA through the interlocking design.

As a global stealth rich man, Kamprad is low-key and lives frugally. He even claims that his family does not own IKEA.

But this argument is controversial. If so, Kamprad has devoted all his life to IKEA, and his three sons are also working in IKEA, but not seeking any reward.

Another argument is that

As the largest furniture retailer in the world, public listing will bring high value added and raise funds to expand the market. But Kamprad has repeatedly stressed that "IKEA will never be listed". What is the purpose behind it? If IKEA shares are listed, the openness and pparency demanded by investors may conflict with the family's low profile concealment of wealth and the risk of losing control.

A series of organizations and agencies centred on IKEA group have sent IKEA's annual operating profits to the Kamprad family's vaults through various channels.

And the funds of this treasury are used for investment and new IKEA shopping malls, so the layout of the Kamprad family has been expanding.