FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2002 file photo, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish multinational furniture retailer IKEA, stands outside the company's head office in Almhult, Sweden. IKEA confirmed Sunday Ingvar... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2002 file photo, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish multinational furniture retailer IKEA, stands outside the company's head office in Almhult, Sweden. IKEA confirmed Sunday Ingvar Kamprad, the IKEA founder who created a global furniture empire, has died at 91. (Claudio Bresciani/TT... (Associated Press) 
 
 FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2002 file photo, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish multinational furniture retailer IKEA, stands outside the company's head office in Almhult, Sweden. IKEA confirmed Sunday Ingvar Kamprad, the IKEA founder who created a global furniture empire, has died at 91. (Claudio Bresciani/TT... (Associated Press) FILE - In this Aug. 6, 2002 file photo, Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish multinational furniture retailer IKEA, stands outside the company's head office in Almhult, Sweden. IKEA confirmed Sunday Ingvar... (Associated Press) 
 
 STOCKHOLM (AP) — Ingvar Kamprad, the IKEA founder who turned a small-scale mail order business into a global furniture empire, has died at 91, the company said Sunday. 
 
 IKEA Sverige, the chain's Swedish unit, said on Twitter that Kamprad died Saturday at his home in Smaland, Sweden. 
 
 "He will be much missed and warmly remembered by his family and IKEA staff all around the world," the company said. 
 
 Kamprad's life story is intimately linked to the company he founded at age 17 on the family farm. 
 
 His work ethic, frugality and down-to-earth style remain at the core of its corporate identity today. But his missteps in life, including early flirtations with Nazism, never rubbed off on IKEA, one of the world's most recognizable brands. 
 
 Kamprad formed the company's name from his own initials and the first letters of the family farm, Elmtaryd, and the parish of Agunnaryd where it is located. It's in the heart of Smaland, a forested province whose people are known in Sweden for thrift and ingenuity. Kamprad possessed both. 
 
 Later in life, his name often appeared on lists of the world's richest men, but he never adopted the aura of a tycoon. He drove a modest Volvo and dressed unassumingly. In a 1998 book that he co-authored about IKEA's history, he described his habit of visiting vegetable street markets right before they closed for the day, hoping to get a better price on their goods. 
 
 Born March 30, 1926, Kamprad was a precocious entrepreneur who sold matchboxes to neighbors from his bicycle. He found that he could buy them in bulk very cheaply from Stockholm, and sell them at a low price but still make a good profit. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds, and later ball-point pens and pencils. 
 
 Kamprad soon moved away from making individual sales calls and began advertising in local newspapers and operating a makeshift mail-order catalog. He distributed his products via the local milk van, which delivered them to the nearby train station. 
 
 In 1950, Kamprad first introduced furniture into his catalog. The furniture was produced by local manufacturers in the forests close to his home. After the positive response he received, he soon decided to discontinue all of the other products and focus on low-priced furniture. 
 
 Since then the IKEA concept — keeping prices low by letting the customers assemble the furniture themselves — offers affordable home furnishings at stores across the globe. 
 
 In 1994, Swedish newspaper Expressen reported that Kamprad had contacts with Swedish fascist leader Per Engdahl in the 1940s and '50s. In a letter to IKEA employees, Kamprad admitted that he once had sympathies for the far-right leader and called it "a part of my life which I bitterly regret." 
 
 In the 1998 book, he gave more details about his youthful "delusions," saying he had been influenced as child by his German grandmother's strong support for Hitler. His paternal grandparents emigrated to Sweden in the 1890s. 
 
 "Now I have told all I can," he said at a book release ceremony at an IKEA store in suburban Stockholm. "Can one ever get forgiveness for such stupidity?" 
 
 The book also contained details about his struggles with alcohol and his successes and failures in business. 
 
 IKEA celebrates its Swedish heritage: the company's stores are painted blue and yellow like the Swedish flag and serve meatballs and other traditional Swedish food. But Kamprad's relationship with his homeland was sometimes complicated. 
 
 He moved to Switzerland in the late 1970s to avoid paying Swedish taxes, which at the time were the highest in the world. He decided to return home only after his wife Margaretha died in 2011. 
 
 The estate inventory filed to Swedish tax authorities in 2013 confirmed that the couple lived comfortably, but hardly in opulence. They had two cars — a 2008 Skoda and a 1993 Volvo 240. Kamprad's personal wealth was established at 750 million kronor ($113 million), a considerable amount, but far from the multibillion-dollar sums attributed to him on world's-richest lists compiled by Forbes and others. 
 
 IKEA officials have said such lists, which compared his wealth to that of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates, erroneously considered IKEA's assets as his own. IKEA is owned by foundation that Kamprad created, whose statutes require profits to be reinvested in the company or donated to charity. 
 
 The estate inventory showed that Kamprad donated more than $20 million to philanthropic causes in 2012 alone. 
 
 In June 2013, Kamprad announced that he would retire from the board which controls the IKEA brand as part of moves to hand responsibilities over to his son, Mathias. 

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption WATCH: 5 things to know about Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Ikea 
 
 The Swedish founder of the Ikea furniture chain, Ingvar Kamprad, has died at the age of 91, the company has announced. 
 
 Mr Kamprad - who pioneered flat-pack furniture - died at his home in Småland, Ikea confirmed in a statement. 
 
 The company said that Mr Kamprad was "one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century". 
 
 The billionaire, who was born in 1926 in Småland, founded Ikea at the age of 17. 
 
 He used some money his father had given him as a gift for performing well at school despite his dyslexia. 
 
 In the later years of his life, Mr Kamprad faced questions over his past links to fascist groups - something he admitted, but said was a "mistake". 
 
 Image copyright Ikea / Paul Barendregt Image caption Ingvar Kamprad said there were "many reasons" why he loved his business 
 
 In a statement on Sunday, Ikea said that Mr Kamprad had "peacefully passed away at his home". 
 
 "He worked until the very end of his life, staying true to his own motto that most things remain to be done," it added. Mr Kamprad eventually stepped down from the company's board in 2013, at the age of 87. 
 
 "Ingvar Kamprad was a great entrepreneur of the typical southern Swedish kind - hardworking and stubborn, with a lot of warmth and a playful twinkle in his eye," the company said. 
 
 His company's designs became popular in part because of their simplicity and value. 
 
 Mr Kamprad is reported to have come up with the idea of flat-pack furniture after watching an employee remove the legs from a table in order to fit it into a customer's car. 
 
 Furniture designer Jeff Banks said that Mr Kamprad's creations radically changed how people made and designed products for the home. 
 
 "People have tried to reproduce and copy that, but unsuccessfully," he said. 
 
 Mr Banks added that the designs produced and sold through the retailer made good use of recyclable products, adding that Mr Kamprad was "head and shoulders above the rest". 
 
 Image caption Ikea has expanded to operate all around the world, including in China 
 
 Mr Kamprad was renowned for his devotion to frugality, reportedly driving an old Volvo and travelling by economy class. 
 
 In a 2016 interview with Swedish television channel TV4, Mr Kamprad said that it was "in the nature of Småland to be thrifty". 
 
 "If you look at me now, I don't think I'm wearing anything that wasn't bought at a flea market," he said. 
 
 He told the channel that he built his business on a "local ethos". 
 
 "We have Småland in the blood, and we know what a krona is - even though it is not as much as it was when we bought candy and went to elementary school," he said, referring to the Swedish currency. 
 
 People took to social media on Sunday to pay their respects to the "greatest Swedish entrepreneur to have ever lived". 
 
 Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom tweeted her condolences, saying that Mr Kamprad had "put Sweden on the world map". 
 
 Ikea: Key facts 
 
 Ikea started in 1943 and now has 389 stores worldwide 
 
 The name comes from Mr Kamprad's initials (IK), together with the name of the farm he grew up on - Elmtaryd (E) - and the nearby village Agunnaryd (A) 
 
 The company's retail sales totalled 36.4bn euros ($43bn, £30bn) in 2016 
 
 Its flat-pack furniture became iconic both for its affordability and for its picture-based assembly instructions 
 
 Ikea has remained privately-owned under a Dutch trust operated by the Kamprad family. Its complex business structure has drawn controversy and the European Commission said last year that it had launched an investigation into Ikea's tax arrangements. 
 
 The European Green Party said that the arrangement had allowed the company to avoid paying some €1bn in tax between 2009 and 2014. 
 
 A spokesman for Dutch-based Inter Ikea, one of the company's two divisions, said that the company had been taxed "in accordance with EU rules". 
 
 In an interview in the 1980s, Mr Kamprad said that his vision for Ikea was that it would be a company that would make life easier for its customers. 
 
 In more recent years, Mr Kamprad had faced scrutiny over his past links to Nazi groups. 
 
 The tycoon revealed some elements of his past in a book in 1988, admitting that he was a close friend of the Swedish fascist activist Per Engdahl, and a member of his New Swedish Movement between 1942 and 1945. 
 
 He said that his involvement was youthful "stupidity" and the "greatest mistake" of his life. 
 
 But a 2011 book by Elisabeth Asbrink alleged details beyond what Mr Kamprad had previously admitted. She wrote that he was an active recruiter for a Swedish Nazi group, and stayed close to sympathisers well after World War Two. 
 
 At the time a spokesman for Mr Kamprad said he had long admitted flirting with fascism, but that there were now "no Nazi-sympathising thoughts in Ingvar's head whatsoever".
– Ingvar Kamprad, the IKEA founder who turned a small-scale mail order business into a global furniture empire, has died at 91, reports the AP. IKEA said that Kamprad died Saturday at his home in Smaland, Sweden. "He will be much missed and warmly remembered by his family and IKEA staff all around the world," the company said. Kamprad's life story is intimately linked to the company he founded at 17 on the family farm. His work ethic, frugality, and down-to-earth style remain at the core of its corporate identity. But his missteps in life, including early flirtations with Nazism that the BBC notes he referred to as the "greatest mistake" of his life, never rubbed off on IKEA. In a 1998 book, he gave more details about his youthful "delusions," saying he had been influenced by his German grandmother's strong support for Hitler. "Now I have told all I can," he said. "Can one ever get forgiveness for such stupidity?" Kamprad formed the company's name from his own initials and the first letters of the family farm, Elmtaryd, and its parish of Agunnaryd. It's in the heart of Smaland, a forested province whose people are known for thrift and ingenuity. Kamprad possessed both. His name often appeared on lists of the world's richest men, but he drove a modest Volvo and dressed unassumingly, shopping for his clothes at flea markets. Kamprad's personal wealth was established at $113 million, a considerable amount, but IKEA officials have said that lists comparing his wealth to that of Warren Buffet or Bill Gates erroneously considered IKEA's assets as his own. IKEA is owned by foundation that Kamprad created, whose statutes require profits to be reinvested in the company or donated to charity. The estate inventory showed that Kamprad donated more than $20 million in 2012 alone.