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Think of Ikea, and you might think of Scandinavian design, big sheds of flat-pack furniture and a Swedish heritage. You might not think of a busy motorway junction in the Netherlands.
提到宜家(Ikea)，你可能会想到北欧设计、大片平板家具和瑞典传统。你可能不会想到荷兰一个繁忙的高速公路交汇处。
Nonetheless, this is where perhaps the most important part of the sprawling Ikea empire is located. Inter Ikea, which owns the brand and concept as well as being responsible for product design and manufacturing of the group, is based in Delft just off the motorway joining Rotterdam and The Hague.
尽管如此，这里可能是庞大的宜家帝国中最重要的部分。Inter Ikea拥有这个品牌和概念，并负责该集团的产品设计和制造，总部位于代尔夫特，靠近连接鹿特丹和海牙的高速公路。
Its location is key to a contentious structure. The European Commission has been investigating the Netherlands’ tax treatment of Inter Ikea for the past seven years in a case that has yet to be resolved.
它的位置是一个有争议的架构的关键。过去七年来，欧盟委员会(European Commission)一直在调查荷兰对Inter Ikea的税务待遇，此案尚未了结。
Ikea was broken up by its legendary founder Ingvar Kamprad in the 1980s for the twin reasons of giving it eternal life by ensuring it could never be acquired in a hostile takeover, and minimising tax. Its spiritual home may remain in the Swedish woods in Älmhult, but the two main parts of Ikea are now based in the Dutch student towns of Delft and Leiden.
宜家在上世纪80年代被其传奇创始人英格瓦•坎普拉德(Ingvar Kamprad)分拆，原因有两个：一是确保它永远不会被恶意收购，从而赋予它永恒的生命，二是最大限度减少纳税。宜家的精神家园可能还在瑞典的阿姆胡尔特森林里，但宜家的两个主要部分现在分别位于荷兰的代尔夫特和莱顿。
Understanding how the entire empire is put together is sometimes akin to trying to build its furniture without an instruction manual. But at its heart, the set-up is designed as a classic franchise system, just one where the franchiser and main franchisee were once the same company.
了解整个帝国是如何组成的，有时就像在没有说明书的情况下组装家具一样。但从核心来看，宜家的架构设计是一个典型的特许经营系统，只是授予特许经营权者和主要特许经营人曾经是同一家公司。
Inter Ikea is the franchiser, the equivalent to Starbucks, McDonald’s or Burger King. Ingka Group — based in Leiden — is the main franchisee, accounting for 90 per cent of Ikea’s sales (Inter Ikea runs a single store that is in Delft). The ties between the two are deep — executives often move from one side to the other.
Inter Ikea是授予特许经营权者，相当于星巴克、麦当劳或汉堡王。总部位于莱顿的Ingka Group是主要特许经营人，占宜家销售额的90% (Inter Ikea在代尔夫特只经营着一家门店)。两者之间的联系非常紧密，高管经常在两边之间流动。
To grasp one of Europe’s most important privately owned companies — which had revenues of €48bn last year — it is essential to understand what goes on in Delft and at Inter Ikea.
要想了解欧洲最重要的私人企业之一——宜家去年的收入达到480亿欧元——就必须了解在代尔夫特和Inter Ikea发生的事情。
Jon Abrahamsson Ring is the low-key chief executive of Inter Ikea, and a former assistant to Kamprad, who died in 2018, 75 years after starting Ikea. The two used to spend hours in German supermarket Lidl after it opened its first stores in Sweden, exploring what it did well.
Jon Abrahamsson Ring是Inter Ikea低调的首席执行官，也是坎普拉德的前助理。坎普拉德在创立宜家75年后，于2018年去世。在德国超市Lidl在瑞典开了第一家店后，他们俩经常在Lidl呆上几个小时，探讨它做得好的地方。
“Ingvar always talked about centuries, not decades or years,” says Ring, explaining the decision to employ a franchise system to help Ikea survive longer than the next business cycle. All Ikea stores pay 3 per cent of their turnover as a franchise fee to Inter Ikea, which in turn provides the brand, product range and manufacturing.
“英格瓦总是谈论百年，而不是几十年或几年，”Ring说，他解释了为什么决定采用特许经营体系，以帮助宜家活过下一个商业周期。所有宜家门店都要向Inter Ikea支付营业额的3%作为特许经营费，后者则提供品牌、产品系列和制造。
Cynics might also say that Kamprad also talked a lot about tax. He left Sweden in the 1970s in protest at what he saw as eye-watering levels of taxation that were so high his three sons could be forced to sell Ikea or float it. So he sought out tax-efficient jurisdictions, settling on the Netherlands and Liechtenstein where he set up foundations that still control Inter Ikea and Ingka to this day. “We have always viewed taxes as a cost, equal to any other cost of doing business,” he said in 2011.
愤世嫉俗者可能还会说，坎普拉德也谈了很多关于纳税的问题。他在20世纪70年代离开瑞典，以抗议他认为令人瞠目结舌的高税率，以至于他的三个儿子可能会被迫出售宜家或将其上市。因此，他寻找了税收优惠的司法管辖区，在荷兰和列支敦士登安顿下来，并在那里成立了基金会，这些基金会直到今天仍控制着Inter Ikea和英格卡。“我们一直将纳税视为一种成本，与其他任何经营成本一样。”他在2011年表示。
Brussels’ tax investigation relates to how the Netherlands taxed Inter Ikea over how it used intra-company loans to develop its franchise system. That is a matter between the commission and the Netherlands, Inter Ikea has noted, while underlining that it believes it has been taxed according to EU rules.
布鲁塞尔的税务调查涉及荷兰如何就Inter Ikea如何利用公司内部贷款发展其特许经营体系对其征税。Inter Ikea指出，这是欧盟委员会和荷兰之间的事情，同时强调它认为自己是按照欧盟规则被征税的。
Whatever the outcome of the case, there is little doubt about the central importance of Inter Ikea. Ring points to the work on delivering on the somewhat awkward-sounding slogan of the group: “making a better everyday life for the many people”. To that end, Inter Ikea’s focus this year is in lowering prices after the pain of being forced to raise them during the Covid-19 pandemic due to inflation and supply chain problems. “If there’s an opportunity, we lower the price, we don’t make the margin bigger. Customers’ wallets are thinner,” says Ring. He points out the iconic Billy bookcase was cut from €99 to €79, for instance.
无论此案的结果如何，Inter Ikea的核心重要性是毋庸置疑的。Ring指出，该集团正在努力实现听起来有些尴尬的口号：“为更多人创造更好的日常生活”。为此，Inter Ikea今年的重点是降价，因为在新冠疫情期间，由于通货膨胀和供应链问题，宜家不得不提价。Ring说：“如果有机会，我们会降价，我们不会提高利润率。客户的钱包更薄了。”他指出，例如，标志性的Billy书柜从99欧元降至79欧元。
Inter Ikea has reduced costs by standardising products — for instance, by making drawers in different pieces of furniture the same size — and by reducing material use. It also has developed its ecommerce operations as well as new city-centre stores such as a planned one on Oxford Street in London to complement its big out-of-town warehouses, which themselves have got new life from being used as fulfilment centres for online orders.
Inter Ikea通过产品标准化(例如，将不同家具的抽屉尺寸统一)和减少材料使用降低了成本。它还发展了自己的电子商务业务，并在市中心开设了新的门店，比如计划在伦敦牛津街(Oxford Street)开设一家门店，以补充其城外的大型仓库。这些仓库本身也因被用作在线订单的履行中心而获得了新的活力。
Ikea’s pre-eminent position in furniture seemed at risk from disruption when Kamprad died six years ago, but that threat appears to have receded, in part due to how fast Ikea has changed. That makes a trip to the junction of the A13 motorway all the more important these days.
六年前坎普拉德去世时，宜家在家具领域的卓越地位似乎面临着被颠覆的风险，但这种威胁似乎已经消退，部分原因是宜家的变革速度之快。这使得如今前往A13高速公路交汇处的旅行变得更加重要。