Clas Ohlson is closing all its stores in the UK and Germany

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

All that’s left is e-commerce

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

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

– Against this background, 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 approach 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

During the third quarter of the year, Clas Ohlson was supposed to increase its overall sales by 8 percent to more than SEK 2.1 billion. Meanwhile, 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 of last year.

Several investments should be made to give the company’s e-commerce an additional strong end to the year.

– During the quarter, we enhanced our e-commerce platform with greater scale, expanded digital capability and the ability to deliver to the customer’s home. We have therefore positioned ourselves to handle the increase we expect during the coming Christmas trade while at the same time laying the foundation for an e-commerce platform set for continued growth. Our enhanced online capacity 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 end customers via Mathem vehicles.

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

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