Attack your competitors with innovation; reward your customers with value.
AN ENTREPRENEURIAL STREAK WAS PULSING THROUGH THE veins of Ingvar Kamprad from an early age. At five, he was selling matchboxes door-to-door. By seventeen, dyslexic Kamprad was selling pencils, an enterprise that developed into a mail-order business also selling soap, seeds, and stockings. This venture was so successful that Kamprad registered the company name IKEA: an acronym where I stands for Ingvar, K for Kamprad, E for Elmtaryd (the name of the farm Kamprad grew up on), and A for Agunnaryd (the Swedish village he grew up in). IKEA started in a shed that had been used for storing milk churns.
By twenty-three, after serving a carpenter's apprenticeship, he had turned his attentions to a furniture business. He had very big plans. Today, IKEA has 225 stores in more than thirty countries, an annual turnover of more than $17 billion, and 90,000 employees. Kamprad is one of the richest men in the world with a personal fortune of $18.5 billion. Kamprad revolutionized furniture retailing by making what was once a luxury more accessible to more consumers. Now, instead of spending many years' salary to furnish a home, IKEA customers can deck out their homes with only a few months' salary.
In 1953, the first IKEA showroom opened in Almhult, a railway town in Sweden. The first showroom was a huge success, leaving other Swedish furniture retailers particularly unhappy with Kamprad's ability to undercut competitors. When the Swedish National Association of Furniture Dealers boycotted him, Kamprad was forced to look outside the country for suppliers and to design pieces in-house. Around the same time, Kamprad stumbled on the idea of flatpacking furniture when a coworker took the legs off a table for easier transport. Bingo. Because of the boycott, IKEA began manufacturing in Poland and, to save on shipping and storage costs, designed pieces that could be flat-packed for delivery back to Sweden. Instead of assembling the furniture once it arrived,
Kamprad sold it from the warehouse straight to customers, who could easily take the flat packs home in their cars and assemble it themselves. The concept for what is now the world's largest furniture retailer was born.
Other IKEA stores appeared throughout Sweden with the flagship store in Stockholm opening in 1965. Other megastores followed in Norway, Denmark, Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States. The company, where titles and suits and ties are rare, remains privately owned through a web of private trusts and charitable foundations. Profits have never been revealed, but Swedish analysts estimate that IKEA's profits are around 6 to 7 percent of total sales. The company ethos encourages its more than 90,000 staff to be known as co-workers, and all must follow Kamprad's nine commandments that center on themes of enthusiasm, humbleness, questioning the status quo, responsibility, self-analysis, simplicity, and thrift. (For more on Kamprad's doctrine, read his 1976 The Testament of a Furniture Dealer— the retailer's answer to Chairman Mao's Red Book.) Company policy also extends to a blanket ban on extravagance, favoring economy class airfares and public transport rather than taxis. Waste is a mortal sin to Kamprad, from leaving the lights on to time-wasting. He recommends dividing the day into ten-minute blocks.
Throughout the evolution of the IKEA store, Kamprad has been obsessive about market research. A former group chief executive, Anders Moberg, remembers Kamprad spending a seven-hour train trip to France asking passengers what they thought of his company. "He was unstoppable,"he said. This focus on customer needs dates back to the 1950s. After noticing that customers were leaving his Stockholm store around lunchtime because they were hungry, Kamprad introduced an inexpensive café to keep his customers in the store. Similarly, he introduced childcare and play areas to attract young families.
According to Forbes magazine, Kamprad is one of the ten richest people in the world. He moved into tax exile in Switzerland in 1974, and IKEA is owned by Kamprad's charitable foundation, Stichting Ingka Foundation, based in the Netherlands. His business empire is a complex one, with accounts being lodged in Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, according to Swedish economist Stellan Bjork. A confessed alcoholic for thirty years (Kamprad says he learned to consume copious quantities of vodka during Polish business trips), he now regularly attends Swedish health farms to dry out. His darkest hour was in the late 1990s when he confessed to being a Nazi sympathizer in his adolescence, something he deeply regrets. Looking ahead, IKEA is hoping that an aggressive rollout of stores in Asia, particularly in China and Japan, and also its Russian store rollout will continue to boost annual sales above the current $17 billion.
Kamprad has been gradually toning down his input in day-to-day operations since 1986 and there is much speculation as to his succession plans, with all three sons, Peter, Jonas, and Mathias, involved in the running of the company and already established on the board of IKEA. Kamprad's official title with the company now is senior adviser. Despite Kamprad's fortune, he eschews luxury. He still flies economy, drives a non-descript Volvo, never wears suits and catches public transport. Legend has it that Kamprad waits until closing time at his local market in Lausanne in order to drive hard bargains with stallholders. But Kamprad is not completely obsessed with savings in his old age. The billionaire admits: "From time to time, I like to buy a nice shirt and cravat”and eat Swedish fish roe.
译文:
宜家——以创新击败对手
以革新击败竞争对手;以价值回报客户
从幼年开始，英瓦尔坎普拉德的血液里就流动着创业的激情。5岁时，他挨家挨户地卖盒装火柴。17岁时，有阅读障碍的坎普拉德开始卖铅笔，并由此创办了一家经营肥皂，种子和长袜邮购生意的小企业。生意很成功，坎普拉德将公司名字注册为IKEA：一个缩写词，I代表Ingvar（英瓦尔），K代表 Kamprad（坎普拉德）， E代表Elmtaryd （坎普拉德在这个瑞典农庄长大成人） ，以及为Agunnaryd （他在这个瑞典村庄成长） 。刚开始宜家的经营场地是在一个曾用于存储牛奶桶的棚子里。
23岁时, 他把目光转向家具生意，此前他曾在一家名为卡彭特的商店做了一段时间学徒,之后便开始酝酿一个大计划。今天，宜家在30多个国家开设了225间卖场，有90000名员工, 年营业额超过170亿美元。 坎普拉德成为世界首富之一，个人财富达185亿美元。坎普拉德掀起了一场家具零售革命，使更多的消费者能负担得起一些曾经是奢侈品的家具。有了宜家，人们现在不需要花费数年工资购买家具，而是仅拿出几个月的薪水就可以置办起一个家。
1953年，第一宜家样板间在瑞典铁路沿线小镇Almhult 开放了。这间样板间大获成功，使得其他家具商经营受挫，大为不满。后来瑞典国家家具经销商协会开始联合抵制坎普拉德，使他不得不去寻找供货商和室内设计作品。大约在同一时间，坎普拉德看到同事为方便运输将桌腿取下来，就灵机一动有了经营平板家具的想法。没错!由于受到抵制，宜家开始把生产场地放在波兰，为了节省运输费和仓储费，宜家开始采纳一些可平板包装运回瑞典的设计作品。家具不是一抵达瑞典就组装起来，而是由顾客从宜家仓库提取后，用汽车载回家再把这些板材自行组装起来，整个过程轻松便利。宜家，这家如今世界最大的家具零售商的经营理念就是这么诞生的。
1995年，宜家旗舰店在瑞典斯德哥尔摩开张，此后宜家分店遍布全国。挪威，丹麦，德国，澳大利亚，加拿大，荷兰，英国和美国也纷纷有了宜家大卖场。宜家的职员少有西装领带打扮，公司也没有职称一说。 而且目前宜家仍然是一家通过私人信托网络和慈善基金会维系的私有企业。宜家的利润从来没有向外界透露过，但瑞典分析家估计宜家的利润约为销售总额的6%-7%。宜家文化鼓励把90000多名职工称为“合作员工”的叫法， 希望他们都能遵循坎普拉德提出的“九诫”，分别是热情，谦逊，质疑现状，责任感，自我剖析，简洁，节俭。（欲了解更多坎普拉德的理论，可读他于1976年发表的《一位家具商的遗嘱》）公司的政策也延伸到全面禁止奢侈浪费，鼓励员工乘坐飞机经济舱, 搭乘公共交通工具而不是出租车。对坎普拉德而言,浪费是弥天大罪，从离开不随手关灯到浪费时间, 一律不允许。他提议以十分钟为一小段来划分每天的时间。
在宜家卖场的整个发展期，坎普拉德都痴迷于市场调研。前集团首席执行官安德斯莫贝里还记得坎普拉德曾花7个小时的火车前往法国，在火车上询问乘客对本公司的看法。这种对客户需求的重视可以追溯到20世纪50年代。 当时坎普拉德发现，在斯德哥尔摩旗舰店，顾客中午饿了就会离开卖场在周围餐馆午餐，于是他就在店内开辟一块价位适中的餐点吧区，把客人留在了店里。同样地，他还开辟了儿童托管游乐区，吸引年轻家庭。
根据福布斯杂志的统计，坎普拉德是世界前十富豪之一。他于1974年搬进瑞士低税区，而宜家由他在荷兰的慈善基金会——英氏-宜家慈善基金会(Stichting Ingka Foundation)所有。
据瑞典经济学家斯特兰比约克的说法，宜家商业帝国相当复杂，在爱尔兰，卢森堡，荷兰都开设了账户。坎普拉德承认自己痴迷酒精已经三十年了（他说他在去波兰出差时学会了大量饮用伏特加），为了戒酒，他现在定期去瑞典的健康农场参加活动。他最黑暗的时刻是在20世纪30年代末，他承认当时因处于青春期而同情纳粹党，对此他深感遗憾。展望未来，宜家正在积极部署在亚洲的卖场，尤其是在中国和日本。在俄罗斯， 经过一系列的宣传推广活动，年销售额有望超过目前的170亿美元。
自1986年以来，坎普拉德已慢慢退出宜家的日常管理， 关于他的继任计划，公众有不少的猜测。他的三个儿子，彼得，乔纳斯和马赛，都参与了宜家公司的经营运行，且已在董事会占有一席之地。坎普拉德对外宣称的头衔是宜家高级顾问。尽管拥有巨额财产，坎普拉德一向避免奢侈。他仍然超级节俭，开一辆毫不起眼的沃尔沃汽车，从来不穿西装，喜爱乘坐公共交通工具。传说坎普拉德还在洛桑本地市场快关门时去和摊贩讨价还价。但坎普拉德晚年并非那么节俭成性。这位亿万富翁承认：不时地,我总喜欢买些漂亮衬衫穿,还爱吃瑞典鱼籽。