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ZURICH - He's been using the same desk chair for 32 years, travels on Swiss trains using his senior discount card and does the grocery shopping at an own-label supermarket chain.
Nothing unusual -- except this is the world's fourth richest man, and he bought that chair from his own store, the ubiquitous Swedish furniture giant Ikea.
"From my mother's side I have an old chair and a beautiful standing clock," Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad told the Swiss magazine Bilanz in a rare interview, to be published tonight (NZ time).
"Otherwise all my furniture comes from Ikea, of course."
Kamprad's fortune was estimated at US$28 billion by Forbes magazine earlier this year, behind only Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, US investor Warren Buffett and Mexican industrialist Carlos Slim.
The 80-year-old Swede lives in Epalinges, above Lake Geneva, and is Switzerland's richest resident, according to Bilanz.
"I've had my desk chair for 32 years," Kamprad said in the interview, for which Bilanz petitioned for 10 years. "My wife reckons I should get a new one, because the material has got dirty in the meantime.
"But technically the chair is as good as new," he said.
Kamprad started business from his garden shed, selling watches, pens and Christmas cards before stumbling on the flat-pack furniture idea in the 1950s when an employee took the legs off a table to fit it into a customer's car.
Nowadays, Ikea is the world's biggest furniture retailer, with 237 stores in some 35 countries and territories and forecast 2006 turnover of 17.7 billion euros ($34.21 billion), still basing its business on that inexpensive self-assembly furniture.
But Kamprad does not believe one of his three sons -- all of whom work for Ikea and take three-year stints as chair of the executive board -- will go on to take charge of the business.
"The problem is being head of a business is hard work. You can keep it up for 8 to 10 years, at most. That's why I believe -- or I should say, I hope -- that none of my sons goes on to be the boss."
Kamprad said he visits his own stores on 25 to 30 days every year, in different parts of the world. When he travels, he still goes with discount tickets.
"It's always fun," he said of his Ikea visits. "And work should always be fun for all colleagues. We all only have one life. A third of life is work. Without desire and fun, work becomes hell."
- REUTERS
