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 design. Payless core products at the heavy end, i.e. building and timber products, were no longer promoted. The jobbing builder market was lost to the new UK Wickes chain. Following poor trading, WH Smith extricated itself from the merger and then Boots sold Do It All to Focus DIY in 1998. The Focus group retained some of the Payless own-brand ranges and successfully bought up Wickes - later selling them at a substantial profit to Travis Perkins. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Marley_Tile_Co Payless DIY Payless DIY was the name of a chain of DIY stores in the UK during the 1980s. The name was