Sweden

Seven in ten Nordic residents shopped online for a total value of 4.9 billion euros during the first quarter of this year. The most frequent shoppers can be found in Norway, as 75% of its inhabitants bought something online during the first three months of this year.

The ecommerce industry in Sweden continues to grow strongly. Online sales in the first quarter of 2014 increased by 16 percent and this growth was especially noticeable in sectors that previously had limited online sales. Predictions are the ecommerce turnover of Sweden will reach 4.70 billion euros this year.

The new ecommerce company Funera wants to make it cheaper to die. The Swedish startup offers funerals costing 590 kronor (€65) whereas a simple funeral costs between 15,000 and 20,000 kronor (€1656-€2208) in Sweden. Funera has lower margins on their coffins, but they also want to cut costs for personal meetings and administration.

The Swedish ecommerce industry grew 19% in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same period last year. Ecommerce continues to change the Swedish retail world and every year it takes an increasing share of the traditional retail.

CDON has announced the local version of Nelly.com in Belgium. The online fashion store was already active in the Northern European country, but that was only through an EU-site in English. Now Belgian consumers are served through a dual language site which is adapted for the local market.

The ecommerce industry in Sweden has increased significantly last year, and it now accounts for a respectable part of all Swedish retail sales. The growth of Swedish ecommerce in 2013 has been the largest since 2007. Last year this business increased with 17 percent to 37 billion Swedish kronor, eg. 4.17 billion euros.

Some Nordic retailers are well known from all over the world. Take IKEA, H&M and Oriflame for example. But still, online stores from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland must think more globally. Nowadays a lot of these sites only provide other Nordic languages and don’t serve markets with high demand.

Volvo has showed off its Roam Delivery service, which turns cars into grocery dropboxes. The Swedish manufacturing company calls this groundbreaking and claims it’s the world’s first delivery service for bringing food and other items to the car.

ICA Sweden is making advanced plans opening an online store later this year. The idea is to give franchisees the opportunity to run their own local online ICA store, while ICA Sweden itself will start an centralized online store. "We think now the time is right."

It’s going extremely well with the ecommerce industry in Northern Europe. The total online economy of sold goods and services amounted 28.4 billion euros in 2012, but is expected to grow to 31 billion euros at the end of this year.

When does a country have a lot of ecommerce potential? Is it about population size, income per capita or the amount of money online spent? It’s all of these and a lot more variables that characterizes a ecommerce market primed for growth. Forrester compared 55 countries, and of the 10 most ecommerce-ready markets, there are 5 European countries: UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

The ecommerce industry in Sweden is booming, as its growth continues to increase. Even in the second quarter of this year, which is often a weak quarter, positive numbers continued to show up. Ecommerce in Sweden could face a total growth of 18 percent and a turnover of 37,3 billion Swedish Kronor (€4,3bn) this year.

DHL is experimenting with a package delivery system in Stockholm, based on crowdsourcing. Via an app called MyWays ordinary people are used to deliver packages to (other) end consumers. Through DHL Freight’s network of service points in Sweden’s capital the service let consumers specify a time and place for delivery, as well as the fee offered for delivery.

Elanders has acquired Myphotobook, a German company that sells personalised photo products for consumers. With the acquisition the Swedish company is now one of the leading players in Europe. Elanders bought Myphotobook for 10.5 million euros from investment holding company Holtzbrinck Digital.

American fans of Swedish retail-clothing company H&M will finally be able to shop online for their favorite dresses, shirts, jeans, accessories and more. H&M, which is known for their reasonably stylish clothing at low prices, revealed yesterday on Twitter that U.S. customers are able to buy their products online next month.