IKEA IKEA IKEA (, ) is a Swedish-founded multinational group that designs and sells , kitchen appliances and home accessories, among other useful goods and occasionally home services. It has been the world's largest furniture retailer since at least 2008. It was founded in Sweden in 1943 by 17-year-old carpenter, Ingvar Kamprad, who was listed by "Forbes" in 2015 as one of the ten richest people in the world, worth more than $40 billion. The company's name is an acronym that consists of the initials of Ingvar Kamprad (name of founder), Elmtaryd (the farm where he grew up), and Agunnaryd (his
Ingvar Kamprad ("Fanny") Glatz was born in Radonitz (Radonice) in Bohemia in then-Austria-Hungary; they left Germany for Sweden in 1896. The surname Kamprad was a variant of "Comrade" and dates back to the 14th century; in the 19th century the Kamprad family had become wealthy estate owners in Thuringia. Achim Kamprad's mother was a distant relative of Paul von Hindenburg. Achim was the younger son of an estate owner and had bought the farm Elmtaryd (presently standardized "Älmtaryd") near the small village of Agunnaryd (now part of Ljungby Municipality) in the province of Småland; with 449 hectares of land it was the