WHY ME LUVS CRATE & BARREL

Icky IKEA

Normally I’m not a mean person, but some things just bother me.  The following info was culled from an article by Lauren Collins from a not very recent issue of the New Yorker.  Since the info spans decades, I doubt that it has changed.   What HAS changed is that my daughter is enamored with IKEA.  So I thought I would put this in my blog…

IKEA is the third largest consumer of lumber in the world… after Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Ingvar Kamprad’s paternal grandparents were German immigrants to Sweden.  Ingvar, of course, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and created a mail-order empire.

IKEA’s vision, according to IKEA, is “To create a better life for the many.”  (Hmmm… sorta like Volkswagen, the peoples' car…  1936?)

IKEA is not really a Swedish company.  It’s controlled by INGKAQ Holding, which is in turn controlled by a tax-exempt stichting, a Dutch nonprofit worth around 20 billion Euros.  This foundation was expected to spend a massive 0.2% of its wealth on charitable giving in 2010.

There’s a shell company that sucks off about 3 percent of IKEA store revenues into a holding company in Lichtenstein called Interlogo.  Supposedly for charity, it’s really a corporate slush fund.    Its primary purpose is corporate tax-optimization and anti-takeover protection for IKEA. Kamprad is chairman of the foundation.

Kamprad has been a tax exile in Switzerland since the 1970s.   He doesn’t pay much in the way of taxes, and does little for the Epalinges (Lausanne, Switzerland) community.  The locals consider him a miser.

Kamprad, as a youth, was a Nazi sympathizer, which I guess is okay for German Scandinavians of a certain age.  However, he was active in the fascist Neo-Swedish movement as recently as 1950, and to this day hails its leader (Per Engdahl)  as a great man.

Kamprad is one of the wealthiest people in the world ($33 billion USD).  Supposedly he drives an old Volvo, flies only economy class, and encourages IKEA employees always to write on both sides of a piece of paper.  He reportedly recycles tea bags and is known to pocket the salt and pepper packets at restaurants.  He says "It is not only for cost reasons that we avoid the luxury hotels. We don't need flashy cars, impressive titles, uniforms or other status symbols. We rely on our strength and our will!" However, owns a villa in upmarket Switzerland, a large country estate in Sweden and a vineyard in Provence, France. Additionally, Kamprad has been known to drive a Porsche . [Wikipedia]


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