Susan Dalgety: Dyslexic teenager who sparked a democratic revolution

Ingvar Kamprad changed our world. Never heard of him? I am not surprised, the 91-year-old Swede, who died a few days ago, was not a household name.

Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad has died at the age of 91. Picture: Getty

Unlike the company he founded when he was only 17 years old.

Mr Kamprad set up Ikea, that blue and yellow box of delights that sits on the edge of almost every city in Europe, and beyond.

Thanks to him, most of us can afford to have designer furniture at discount prices, even if the cost of building his infamous flat-pack furniture is often a fierce family row.

There are those who dismiss Ikea products as second-rate, shoddy even. They are wrong. Ikea is the most democratic of stores, good design for everyone.

Apparently there are 60 million of its Billy bookcases in the world – that is nearly one for every 100 people on the planet. Astonishing.

Not a bad achievement for a teenage boy with dslylexia who, in 1943, had a lightbulb moment when he saw a man forced to remove the legs from a table to fit it in a customer’s car.

Now where did I put that Allen key?