Ellos
Ellos Group is a Swedish home shopping and e-commerce company headquartered in Borås, Sweden. Ellos Group has operations mainly in the Nordics along with other European countries.
History
[edit]Ellos was founded in 1947 by Olle Blomqvist and Lars Gustafsson. They wanted their company to be named "LO:s," from their names, but were not allowed to register the name as LO already used it. There is a rumour that name "Ellos" was Olle's name backwards with a genitive "s" at the end, first popularised with the widely popular Swedish talk show Hylands hörna.[1]
In 1978, the company moved to its current location in Viared, 10 km west of Borås; the new premises were inaugurated by Carl XVI Gustaf, the king of Sweden.
In 1988, the ICA concern acquired the company, which then had 1 500 employees.
IK Partners (Formerly Industri Kapital) acquired Ellos from ICA in November 1995, with stake later sold to La Redoute (Redcats) in July 1997. During IK’s ownership, Ellos was a mail-order company in the Nordic countries.[2] Between 1997-2013, Ellos was a part of Redcats, which is owned by the holding company PPR.
Since 2013, Ellos Group is owned by the Sweden-based venture capital company Nordic Capital. Ellos is one of Scandinavia’s leading home shopping companies with an annual turnover of more than €200 million and 620 employees.[3]
Ellos Group offers several own brands, Ellos within apparel and home products, and Jotex within home textile and decoration. Sub-brands within Ellos include Áhkká, Staycation, Ellos On Our Terms and Ellos Home among others.
Ellos is one of the main sponsors of the football club Elfsborg.
References
[edit]- ^ Nu berättar Ellos grundare sin historia, Borås Tidning, retrieved February 2, 2017
- ^ "Ellos I Private Equity Investment I Mid Cap I IK Partners". IK Partners. Retrieved 2024-10-14.
- ^ "Ellos Group". www.nordiccapital.com. Archived from the original on 2014-02-04.
1. http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/nyheter/sverige/nordic-capital-koper-ellos-och-jotex_7942916.svd
