In 1931, a five-year old Swede named Ingvar Kamprad started selling matches to his neighbors. At seven, under bicycle power, he expanded his reach and inventory, adding flower seeds, greeting cards, Christmas tree decorations, and later pencils and ball-point pens.

At 17, he took some venture capital (well, some merit money from Dad for good grades) and founded his own business, naming it after his initials (I.K.) and the first letters of his home farm and village (E,A).

That was in 1943. Today, Kamprad’s IKEA empire (he still advises the parent company) spans 279 stores in 36 countries, employing some 118,000 people in 40 countries. IKEA’s last decade has been a fiscal dazzler, with sales rising from 5.4 billion euros in 1997 to 19.8 billion euros in 2007.

A week ago today, IKEA came to New York, opening a mega-store on Brooklyn’s historic Red Hook waterfront. “We worked for years to get a New York site,” says Pernille Lopez, the Danish-born president of IKEA North America. “The challenge was to find the right neighborhood fit.”

The protests that kept IKEA from one Brooklyn neighborhood dogged the Red Hook site, but early activity points to a successful start in maritime Red Hook, once America’s premier port and today an outpost mixing gentrification with long-blighted housing projects.

With the feared traffic woes already materializing, Lopez says the plan is to push for “fifty percent use of public transportation”—free shuttles, water taxis and bus service—but that success remains to be seen. The biggest wins so far? Employment for grateful locals, and IKEA’s corporately responsible gift of 6.2 acres of restored harborfront—vintage dock cranes, historical exhibits and all.

Jeff Heilman

6/25/08