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 with W.H.Smith's Do It All chain. The Payless Sevenoaks head office (which had relocated from South Park to Suffolk Way) was closed and the Do It All premises in Falcon House, Dudley, West Midlands became the headquarters for the new chain. Payless and WH Smith references were dropped and the merged chain became simply "Do It All". The combined store portfolio had some overlaps and spare and unprofitable stores were offloaded, usually to competitors such as Focus DIY, Great Mills and B&Q. Do It All was marketed to appeal mainly to female consumers/interior designers with slicker advertising and instore