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
Chain store Chain store A chain store or retail chain is a retail outlet in which several locations share a brand, central management, and standardized business practices. They have come to dominate the retail and dining markets, and many service categories, in many parts of the world. A franchise retail establishment is one form of chain store. In 2004, the world's largest retail chain, Walmart, became the world's largest corporation based on gross sales. In 1792, Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna established W.H. Smith as a news vending business in London that would become a national concern in the mid-19th