Clas Ohlson closes all stores in UK and Germany

Clas Ohlson will reduce its store networks in Great Britain and Germany to invest fully instead in its operations in the Nordic countries and in e-commerce in the relevant countries. The announcement came this morning in connection with the company’s release of its figures for the first half of the year.

Only e-commerce left

The background to the decision is that stores in Great Britain and Germany are not profitable.

– After 10 years, the operations in Great Britain are still operating at a significant loss, even after measures to improve the store network in recent years. An evaluation of the pilot programme with four stores in Germany shows that the company is unable to deliver according to plan and that the right conditions for profitability are not in place, says Lotta Lyra, CEO of Clas Ohlson, in a press release.

Against this backdrop, the store network in Great Britain and Germany will be phased out and our presence in these markets, in line with the new focus, will be focused on e-commerce. This gives us the opportunity to develop a scalable business model initially for the UK, Germany and eventually other markets.

More e-commerce days before Christmas

In the third quarter of the year, Clas Ohlson was supposed to increase its total sales by 8 percent to more than SEK 2.1 billion. At the same time, the company's e-commerce was supposed to increase by 43 percent. The result fell to SEK 25 million from SEK 96 million in the corresponding quarter last year.

Several investments need to be made to give the company's e-commerce business an additional strong end to the year.

– During the quarter, we enhanced our e-commerce platform with greater scale, expanded digital capability and home delivery capability. We are therefore positioning ourselves to handle the surge we anticipate during the upcoming Christmas trade while laying the foundation for an e-commerce platform that is set for continued growth. Our enhanced online capability gives us eight additional e-commerce days before Christmas compared to last year.

About a hundred products on Amazon

Clas Ohlson has now started its cooperation with Mathem, which has so far received a positive response from customers. Currently, three Clas Ohlson stores in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö send goods directly to Mathem’s central warehouse. From there, they are then sent to the end customers via Mathem vehicles.

In addition, Clas Olson has many other e-commerce news to report.

– Our Click & Collect solution has been very well received. Around 30 percent of our Swedish online customers choose this delivery option. And through our collaboration with Amazon UK, we now deliver around a hundred products via their platform to customers in the UK. Tests of new store concepts, such as the Lab Store and Concept Store, are ongoing, says Lotta Lyrå.