Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of Ikea, passed away over the weekend at his home in Sweden. There may be no single human being who has had more of an effect on the furniture of planet Earth than Kamprad.

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He founded Ikea in 1943 at the age of 17, reportedly selling replicas of his uncle's kitchen table, predominantly through mail order. Throughout the '40s and '50s he gradually added other pieces of furniture to his lineup, as well as employees to fill orders, and in 1956 came the big moment: He watched an employee remove one of his table's legs before loading it into a customer's car. Furniture, he realized, ought be designed to break down for shipping.

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While the flatpack insight was not limited to Kamprad, the scale of his business acumen within this arena certainly was. Today there are 412 of Ikea's gargantuan stores scattered across North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East hosting some 930 million visits a year. Statistic Brain says the company sells 42 million Billy bookcases per year and 217 million catalogs are shipped out. The company carries nearly 10,000 home furnishing articles and employs 120,000 people around the world.

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It should go without saying that they are the world's largest furniture retailer.

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Kamprad was 91 and until his death, still served as a senior adviser to the company. "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," Ikea said in a statement. "He worked until the very end of his life, staying true to his own motto that most things remain to be done."

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