宜家的成功秘诀(中英文对照)摘自经济学人

宜家的成功秘诀
摘自：《经济学人》
高效的运营，精细的税务规划，加上严格的控制
以下段落的顺序已被随机打乱，请各位自己动手排列成一篇完整通顺的文章。

开个玩笑而已。

但如果你有过在宜家购物的经验，那么你对把家具组件打包带回家再拼装时的种种麻烦和挫败感一定不会感到陌生。

可是无数的消费者对此并没有怨言，只因为两点：宜家的产品不但时髦，而且非常便宜。

2009年9月份接任宜家集团执行总裁的麦克奥尔森说“我们讨厌浪费”。

他指着一个鲜红色的“Ektorp”沙发，神情中显露出些许自豪。

去年他的设计团队想到了一个办法，使常用的三座沙发在包装时占据的空间更小，同样大的空间能够放进去的沙发数量就能多一倍。

这个方法使沙发的价格也相应地下降了100欧元（约合135美元），而且使运输过程中产生的二氧化碳也大幅度减少。

节约是宜家企业文化中的核心理念。

奥尔森认为这一理念可以追溯到公司的发源地斯马兰，瑞典南部一个贫穷的地区。

他说那里的居民“倔强、节俭、善于过精打细算的日子。

”自从英格瓦坎普拉德在1943年创办宜家以来，公司就一直致力于让“条件有限的人能够像有钱人一样布置自己的家”。

宜家给外界的印象是一个具有环保意识、社会责任感强的公司。

奥尔森毫不掩饰他对宜家支持慈善事业和只使用可再生能源的肯定。

他说他希望和自己一块儿工作的人是快乐的、诚实的、习惯于独立思考的。

公司200名高管中有40%是女性，这一点令他也颇感自豪。

宜家的经营业绩是相当不错的。

在2010财政年度，宜家的销售额增长7.7%，达到231亿欧元，净利润上升了6.1%，达到27亿欧元。

法国的Conforama和英国的Habitat及其他业内竞争对手都难以望其项背。

尽管80%的销售额来自于经济受创的欧洲地区，宜家仍凭借其强大的品牌效应和廉价政策成功度过了经济危机。

2010年宜家在西班牙和意大利的销售额分别上涨了8.2%和11.3%。

在保加利亚和罗马尼亚，宜家也是经营的有声有色，并且正计划进一步拓展在中欧和东欧地区的业务。

以节俭闻名的德国人是宜家最大的主顾，他们的消费量占宜家的总销售额的15%。

宜家甚至已经融入了德国的文化：2009年在汉堡的一间剧院里上演了一部与之有关的戏剧《来自瑞典的奇迹》，该戏剧采用瑞典民歌曲调演唱的方式展现了这个“家具业始祖”的发展历程。

然而在宜家清新的形象背后，却是一个极具瑞典特征、本能般低调、甚至在某些人眼里等级制度森严的公司。

所有六名监督委员会的成员均为瑞典人（84岁的坎普拉德现任高级顾问）。

几年来，有关公司在亚洲使用童工和购买活鹅鹅毛的批评之声一直不绝于耳。

有记者透露，坎普拉德年轻时曾支持过瑞典的法西斯组织；他在一封公开信中已经就此致歉。

近来，在拥有12家门店的俄罗斯，宜家遇到一些麻烦。

虽然宜家一向致力于反腐败运动，并冻结了在俄罗斯的投资以抗议政府的监管不力，但去年它却卷入到了一场丑闻之中。

两名驻俄罗斯的高管被解雇，原因据称是一名分包商为获得其位于圣彼得堡的商场的供电而向他人行贿，但两名高管对此事却充耳不闻。

每当有负面消息传出时，开诚布公是宜家一贯的作风，这让人很是钦佩。

但公司的所有权结构却很不透明。

一些批评者认为宜家的内部架构最大程度地减少了纳税，降低了公司的透明度，却给坎普拉德家族带来了丰厚的回报，并且杜绝了宜家被外人收购的可能。

宜家集团在全球26个国家里有284家商场，其母公司是英格卡控股，一家在荷兰注册的私有公司。

英格卡控股则完全归斯地廷英格卡基金会所有。

该基金会的注册地也在荷兰，无需缴税，系非营利性实体，1982年坎普拉德将其在宜家的股份纳入到该基金会名下。

一个由五名成员组成、坎普拉德任主席的执行委员会负责基金会的运行。

在荷兰注册的另一家私有公司—宜家国际系统，则拥有宜家的商标和概念，它的母公司为宜家国际控股，是一个在卢森堡注册的公司。

宜家国际控股的所有人很多年来一直不为外界所知，宜家也拒绝透露他们的身份。

一月份播放的一部瑞典记录片爆料说，一支由坎普拉德家族控制，名为Interogo 的列支敦士登基金会，是宜家国际控股的真正所有者，而宜家国际系统和每个宜家商场签订的特许经营协议则是宜家国际控股收入的来源。

这可是个赚大钱的买卖：宜家称所有的特许经营店都要上交收入的3%作为使用宜家知识产权的专利权税。

宜家集团是最大的特许经营商；其他特许经营商负责管理其余的35家商场，这些商场主要分布在中东和亚洲地区。

荷兰的一家商场由宜家国际系统直接管理。

在瑞典电视台播出这部引发争论的记录片后，坎普拉德回应说“低税”是公司奉行的低成本政策中与生俱来的一部分。

然而宜家这种绞尽脑汁减少公司税赋的做法却与其注重社会责任的对外形象不太相称。

奥尔森决定向外界披露更多财务方面的信息，以图消除针对宜家透明度低的批评。

去年公司有史以来首次向外界公布了销售、利润、资产和负债等方面的数据。

奥尔森认为宜家保留私有公司的身份会更具竞争力。

与其被上市所累，为完成季度目标而殚精竭虑，莫不如去关注公司长远的发展。

奥尔森计划将宜家在中国开店的速度提高一倍，中国目前已经有11家宜家商场。

公司在俄罗斯遇到的麻烦没有使奥尔森退缩，他计划在未来几年内在莫斯科地区有可能再开三家商场。

奥尔森还希望在当地的零售业对外开放时进军印度市场，他甚至还想扩张宜家在英国的版图。

对于英国人来说，家就是一座城堡，而城堡需要家具来装饰。

附录2：The secret of IKEA's success
From：《the Economist》
Lean operations, shrewd tax planning and tight control
THE paragraphs below are arranged randomly; you will have to assemble the finished article yourself.
Just kidding. But if you shop at IKEA, you are no doubt familiar with the hassle and frustration of assembling its flat-pack furniture at home. Millions of customers endure it, for two reasons: IKEA’s products are stylish and they are very, very cheap.“We hate waste,” says Mikael Ohlsson, who took over as chief executive of IKEA Group in September 2009. He points proudly at a bright-red “Ektorp” sofa. Last year his designers found a way to pack the popular three-seater more compactly, doubling the amount of sofa they could cram into a given spa ce. That shaved €100 ($135) from the price tag—and significantly reduced the carbon-dioxide emissions from transporting it.
Thrift is the core of IKEA’s corporate culture. Mr Ohlsson traces it back to the company’s origins in Smaland, a poor region in sou thern Sweden whose inhabitants, he says, are “stubborn, cost-conscious and ingenious at making a living with very little”. Ever since Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943, the company has tried to allow “people with limited means to furnish their houses like rich people”.
IKEA presents itself as a green company with a social mission. Mr Ohlsson boasts of its charitable work and its aim to use only renewable energy. He says he wants his “co-workers” to be happy, honest and inclined to think for themselves. He is proud that 40% of the company’s 200 top managers are women.
Business is good. In the fiscal year 2010, IKEA’s sales grew by 7.7% to €23.1 billion and net profit increased by 6.1% to €2.7 billion. Conforama, Habitat and other rivals do not come close. I KEA’s strong brand and low prices helped it to weather the downturn, even though 80% of its sales are in crisis-hit Europe. In 2010 its sales rose by 8.2% in Spain and 11.3% in Italy. The firm is doing well in Bulgaria and Romania and planning to expand further in central and eastern Europe.
Thrifty Germans are IKEA’s best customers, accounting for 15% of sales. It has become part of German culture: in 2009 a Hamburg theatre staged an opera about it, “Wunder von Schweden” (“Miracle from Sweden”), a biography of the “furniture messiah” set to Swedish folk tunes.
Yet behind IKEA’s clean image is a firm that is very Swedish, secretive by instinct and, some say, rigidly hierarchical. All six members of the supervisory board are Swedish. (Mr Kamprad, at 84, is a senior adviser.) Over the years the company has been accused of using child labour in Asia and of buying feathers plucked from live geese. Journalists revealed that Mr Kamprad had backed a Swedish fascist group in his youth; he apologised in an open letter.
More recently, IKEA has had problems in Russia, where it has 12 stores. Having campaigned against corruption and even frozen its investments there for a while to protest against poor governance, last year IKEA was itself involved in a scandal. It
had to sack two senior executives in Russia for allegedly turning a blind eye to bribes paid by a subcontractor to secure electricity supplies for its St Petersburg outlets.
When damaging news breaks, IKEA has an admirable habit of coming clean. But the firm’s ownership structure is opaque. Critics grumble that its set-up minimises tax and disclosure, handsomely rewards the Kamprad family and makes IKEA immune to a takeover. The parent for IKEA Group, which controls 284 stores in 26 countries, is Ingka Holding, a private Dutch-registered company. Ingka Holding, in turn, belongs entirely to Stichting Ingka Foundation, a Dutch-registered, tax-exempt, non-profit-making entity, which was given Mr Kamprad’s IKEA shares in 1982. A five-person executive committee, chaired by Mr Kamprad, runs the foundation.
The IKEA trademark and concept is owned by Inter IKEA Systems, another private Dutch company. Its parent company is Inter IKEA Holding, registered in Luxembourg. For years the owners of Inter IKEA Holding remained hidden from view and IKEA refused to identify them.
In January a Swedish documentary revealed that Interogo, a Liechtenstein foundation controlled by the Kamprad family, owns Inter IKEA Holding, which earns its money from the franchise agreements Inter IKEA Systems has with each IKEA store. These are lucrative: IKEA says that all franchisees pay 3% of sales as a royalty. The IKEA Group is the biggest franchisee; other franchisees run the remaining 35 stores, mainly in the Middle East and Asia. One store in the Netherlands is run directly by Inter IKEA Systems.
After the airing of the polemical documentary on Swedish TV, Mr Kamprad retorted that “tax efficiency” was a natural part of the company’s low-cost culture. Yet such diligent efforts to reduce the firm’s tax burden sit uncomfortably with IKEA’s sociall y conscious image. Mr Ohlsson is trying to defuse criticism of IKEA’s opacity by providing more information on its finances. Last year the firm published detailed figures on sales, profits, assets and liabilities for the first time ever.
Mr Ohlsson argues that IKEA is more competitive as a privately owned company. Instead of sweating to meet the quarterly targets the stockmarket demands, it can concentrate on long-term growth. Mr Ohlsson plans to double the pace of store openings in China, where IKEA alread y has 11 outlets. Undeterred by the firm’s headaches in Russia, he plans to open perhaps three more stores in the Moscow area in the next few years. Mr Ohlsson hopes to move into India when the retail market opens up there. He even sees room for expansion in Britain. An Englishman’s home is his castle, and castles need furniture.。