Anita Roddick
The beginnigs of Anita Robbick's life and work were humble. She was born in 1942 and raised in southeast of England, near Brighton. Her Italian immigrant Mother and American Father ran a cafe where ealry on, Roddick said, she was instilled with an intense work ethic. "Any immigrant, you watch what they do with their kids. It's like legimate child labour. From day one we were working in a cafe. There was no leisure; we don't understand leisure. The work ethic is so profound within the immigrant culture."
In 1962 Roddick got a scholarship to study in a kibbutz in Israel. "There", she says, "the stories of the political leaders like Castro and Che Guevera were our vision. It was no wonder when I set up my own little enterprise I was going to do things differently."
When she returned to England she married Gordon Roddick in 1971. The couple owned and ran a restaurant and eight-room hotel and before long they felt overworked and needed a change of direction. With her approval, Gordon went off to ride a horse from Buenos Aires to New York City and Anita was left to support herself and her two children.
Out of a need for survival, Roddick concocted cosmetics from "every little ingredient with a story" that she had stored in her garage. She opened her first shop in Brighton with just 15 products, which she packed in "five sizes so at least it looked like I had at least 100."
Asked why she chose skin care, Roddick replied: "Because it's storytelling.In every group I have spent time with, women will always corral around a well and tell stories about the body, birth, marriage and death. Men only have conversations or memories about their first shave. But women will always use the body as a canvas, a playground. Even when they were taken to the gallows, women would always want to put some make-up on"
The shop was thriving and by the time her husband returned from his 10-month trek, she had opened a second store and customers were asking if they could start their own Body Shop branches. The Roddicks set up a system of franchises.
The stories she told of the causes she supports or natural ingredients she uses in her cosmetics have brought her a net worth estimated at more than £120 million, making her one of the England's wealthiest women.
Ingvar Kamprad
Ingvar Kamprad was born in the south of Sweden in 1926 and raised on a farm called Elmtaryd, near the small village of Agunnaryd. At an early age, he learned that he could buy matches in bulk from Stockholm and sell them at a fair price, but a good profit. He reinvested his profits and expanded to fish, seeds, Christmas tree decorations and pens and pencils. At the age of 17, Kamprad's Father gave him a nice reward for doing well in school. What did he spend it on? He founded IKEA.
The name IKEA was formed from Kamprad's initials (I.K.) plus the first letters of Elmtaryd and Agunnaryd, the farm and village where he grew up. He continued to expand his business to a variety of goods, including wallets, watches, jewelery and stockings. When he outgrew his ability to call on his customers individually, he converted to a sort of makeshift mail order operation, hiring the local milk van to make his deliveries.
IKEA has now become known worldwide for its innovative and stylish designs. Almost all IKEA products are designed to for flat packaging, which reduces shipping costs, minimizes transport damage, increases store inventory capacity, and makes it easier for customers to take the furniture home themselves, rather than needing delivery. But the original reason for it was competitive pressure from IKEA's competitors to their suppliers, who actually boycotted IKEA, forcing IKEA to do it themselves.
Kamprad's vision has been the driving force behind IKEA's success. IKEA hires its own designers, who have received numerous awards over the years. Kamprad believes that the company exists not just to improve people's lives, but to improve the people themselves. The self-service store design and ease of assembly of their furniture are not merely cost controls, but an opportunity for self-sufficiency. This vision is reinforced in their advertising and catalogue as well.
Ingvar Kemprad made headlines in early 2004 when Swedish business magazine Veckans Affarer reported that he had surpassed Bill Gates as the world's wealthiest person. While IKEA's unconventional ownership structure makes this the matter of some debate, there is no doubt that IKEA is still one of the largest, most successful privately held companies in the world, with over 200 stores in 31 countries employing over 75,000 people and generating over 12 billion in sales annually.
Comments