Founders - Ingvar Kamprad

First location - Älmhult, Sweden

IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad showed entrepreneurial promise from a young age. At age 5, he began buying matches in bulk from Stockholm and selling them to neighbors for a profit. He later moved on to selling flower seeds, greeting cards, Christmas tree decorations, and more.

In 1943, when he was 17, Kamprad founded IKEA from his uncle's kitchen table. It began as a mail-order business, selling a variety of items like stockings, jewelry, watches, pens, and picture frames. Kamprad added the first piece of furniture to the company's offerings a few years later. Furniture sales got even bigger with the introduction of the famous IKEA catalog in 1951 and the first showroom in 1953. IKEA's furniture soon became the focal point of the company as it began phasing out all other products over the next few years.