- Daily Entrepreneur
- Posts
- Embracing Constraints
Ingvar Kamprad built an empire that revolutionized the way we think about furniture and home design.
He ran IKEA for over five decades and maintained a relentless drive for simplicity and affordability.
Kamprad's upbringing on a small farm in rural Sweden instilled the values of frugality and resourcefulness. He believed that every expense should be questioned, and that being thrifty was the key to unlocking creativity and innovation. He famously drove an old Volvo, wore secondhand clothes, and took economy flights.
The concept of requiring customers to pick their own products off warehouse shelves and assemble it appalled most retailers. But, Ingvar’s constraints and focus laid the groundwork for a number of creative solutions.
More impressively, he scaled his small rural furniture store in Älmhult, Sweden into a multi-billion dollar revenue international behemoth without outside capital.
Kamprad learned to be allergic to debt from his father and maintained ironclad control over his business, in the same form as Gates, Bloomberg, and Craig Newmark, of Craigslist.
Even with ‘total control’, your business will have constraints. You will be defined by how you operate within them.
The Daily Entrepreneur newsletter delivers brief meditations on the principles & practices of the world's greatest business builders. This newsletter will always remain free and dedicated to helping you get a little better each day.