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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)，你可能會想到北歐設計、大片平板傢俱和瑞典傳統。你可能不會想到荷蘭一個繁忙的高速公路交匯處。
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.
儘管如此，這裏可能是龐大的宜家帝國中最重要的部分。Inter Ikea擁有這個品牌和概念，並負責該集團的產品設計和製造，總部位於代爾夫特，靠近連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.
它的位置是一個有爭議的架構的關鍵。過去七年來，歐盟委員會(European Commission)一直在調查荷蘭對Inter Ikea的稅務待遇，此案尚未了結。
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.
宜家在上世紀80年代被其傳奇創辦人英格瓦•坎普拉德(Ingvar Kamprad)分拆，原因有兩個：一是確保它永遠不會被惡意收購，從而賦予它永恆的生命，二是最大限度減少納稅。宜家的精神家園可能還在瑞典的阿姆胡爾特森林裏，但宜家的兩個主要部分現在分別位於荷蘭的代爾夫特和萊頓。
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.
瞭解整個帝國是如何組成的，有時就像在沒有說明書的情況下組裝傢俱一樣。但從核心來看，宜家的架構設計是一個典型的特許經營系統，只是授予特許經營權者和主要特許經營人曾經是同一家公司。
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是授予特許經營權者，相當於星巴克、麥當勞或漢堡王。總部位於萊頓的Ingka Group是主要特許經營人，佔宜家銷售額的90% (Inter Ikea在代爾夫特只經營著一家門店)。兩者之間的聯繫非常緊密，高階主管經常在兩邊之間流動。
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.
要想了解歐洲最重要的私人企業之一——宜家去年的收入達到480億歐元——就必須瞭解在代爾夫特和Inter Ikea發生的事情。
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低調的首席執行長，也是坎普拉德的前助理。坎普拉德在創立宜家75年後，於2018年去世。在德國超市Lidl在瑞典開了第一家店後，他們倆經常在Lidl呆上幾個小時，探討它做得好的地方。
“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.
「英格瓦總是談論百年，而不是幾十年或幾年，」Ring說，他解釋了爲什麼決定採用特許經營體系，以幫助宜家活過下一個商業週期。所有宜家門店都要向Inter Ikea支付營業額的3%作爲特許經營費，後者則提供品牌、產品系列和製造。
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.
憤世嫉俗者可能還會說，坎普拉德也談了很多關於納稅的問題。他在20世紀70年代離開瑞典，以抗議他認爲令人瞠目結舌的高稅率，以至於他的三個兒子可能會被迫出售宜家或將其上市。因此，他尋找了稅收優惠的司法管轄區，在荷蘭和列支敦斯登安頓下來，並在那裏成立了基金會，這些基金會直到今天仍控制著Inter Ikea和英格卡。「我們一直將納稅視爲一種成本，與其他任何經營成本一樣。」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.
布魯塞爾的稅務調查涉及荷蘭如何就Inter Ikea如何利用公司內部貸款發展其特許經營體系對其徵稅。Inter Ikea指出，這是歐盟委員會和荷蘭之間的事情，同時強調它認爲自己是按照歐盟規則被徵稅的。
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.
無論此案的結果如何，Inter Ikea的核心重要性是毋庸置疑的。Ring指出，該集團正在努力實現聽起來有些尷尬的口號：「爲更多人創造更好的日常生活」。爲此，Inter Ikea今年的重點是降價，因爲在新冠疫情期間，由於通貨膨脹和供應鏈問題，宜家不得不提價。Ring說：「如果有機會，我們會降價，我們不會提高利潤率。客戶的錢包更薄了。」他指出，例如，標誌性的Billy書櫃從99歐元降至79歐元。
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透過產品標準化(例如，將不同傢俱的抽屜尺寸統一)和減少材料使用降低了成本。它還發展了自己的電子商務業務，並在市中心開設了新的門店，比如計劃在倫敦牛津街(Oxford Street)開設一家門店，以補充其城外的大型倉庫。這些倉庫本身也因被用作在線訂單的履行中心而獲得了新的活力。
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時，宜家在傢俱領域的卓越地位似乎面臨著被顛覆的風險，但這種威脅似乎已經消退，部分原因是宜家的變革速度之快。這使得如今前往A13高速公路交匯處的旅行變得更加重要。