Ingbar Camprad founded IKEA when he was 17 years old and worked on it until he died at 91 years old.

He wrote what they called the IKEA Company Bible.

It's a document that's called the Testament of a furniture dealer.

I actually love the message inside so much that I had the document printed and bound and it is now sitting on my desk.

And in that document and something Ingvar repeated for more than six decades was that cost

awareness was to be IKEA's anthem.

Ingbar's dedication to that idea was total.

And the way that Ingbar spoke about this, it sounded and reminded me a lot of what Sam

Walton would say about the importance of cost

control in his autobiography.

There's multiple different quotes from his autobiography where Sam talks about this.

This is one of my favorite.

He says, I'm asked why today when Walmart has been so successful, when we're already a $50 billion

plus company, should we stay so cheap?

That's simple because we believe in the value of the dollar.

We exist to provide value to our customers.

This is something Ingbar repeats over and over again,

which means that in addition to quality and service, we have to save them money.

Every time Walmart spends $1 foolishly, it comes right out of the customer's pocket.

Every time we save them a dollar, that puts us one step ahead of the

competition, which is where we always plan to be. Control your expenses better than your

competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage for 25 years running,

...