ABSTRACT
IKEA, the furniture store from Sweden, began life in 1943 when its 17-year-old founder, Ingvar Kamprad, used money given to him by his father to begin a small business selling pens, pencils and even seeds in his local area. Over the following eight years Kamprad built this small enterprise into a household goods and furniture mail order business and gave it the name IKEA, which combined the initials of his name with those of Elmtaryd, the farm he grew up on, and his hometown of Agunnaryd to create the now iconic yellow and blue (the colours of the Swedish flag) branded furniture retailer (Lief 2008).
