Clas Ohlson company was founded in 1918 by the technically minded Clas Ohlson (1895–1979), as a mail order business based in the Swedish village of Insjön, Dalarna. Initially, only manuals and technical literature were sold, thus allowing people who lived in rural communities to obtain literature that would otherwise be unavailable. He opened his first shop in Insjön in 1926, but it was not until 1989, when the company opened a store in a shopping centre in central Stockholm, that it expanded into the retail business. The first store outside Sweden was opened 1991 in Oslo in Norway and in 1999, the
Payless DIY Payless DIY Payless DIY was the name of a chain of DIY stores in the UK during the 1980s. The name was first used in 1983 to re-brand the Marley Homecare chain. The change was done under the chairmanship of Tom O'Sullivan, MD Ted Lansdowne and Merchandising Director Doug Spickernell to counter public perception of the Marley name as good, reliable but expensive. The transformation was inspired by the model adopted by Wickes in the U.S.A., i.e. larger stocks of trade-related goods, particularly timber and building lines, and a classic "pile it high, sell it cheap" approach. Not just a