以革新击败竞争对手;以价值回报客户 Attack your competitors with innovation; reward your customers with value.
An entrepreneurial streak (n.条纹，少许) was pulsing through the veins of Ingvar Kamprad from an early age. At five, he was selling matchboxes door-to-door. By seventeen, dyslexic(adj.诵读障碍的) 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 （取首字母的缩写形式） 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(牛奶桶).
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.
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（n.气质，风格） encourages its more than 90,000 staff to be known as co-workers, and all must follow Kamprad's nine commandmentsx(n.戒律) that center on themes of enthusiasm, humbleness, questioning the status quo, responsibility, self-analysis, simplicity, and thrift. 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.
