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
Clas (ecclesiastical settlement) which lie outside the modern boundary of Wales in the Welsh Marches a total of 150-200 "clasau" may have existed. Many of these early ‘‘clasau’’ were granted as endowments to the Monasteries, particularly those of the Cistercians, founded by the Normans and the Welsh Princes. Clas (ecclesiastical settlement) A clas (Welsh "clasau") was a native Christian church in early medieval Wales. Unlike later Norman monasteries, which were made up of a main religious building supported by several smaller buildings, such as cloisters and kitchens, a clas was normally a single building. The building was run by a community of clergy