Sweden

Zalando is slowly ending its free delivery service in Europe. It started last November in Italy and now more and more markets are starting to ask for a delivery fee. Latest markets to be hit by this decision are Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.

iDeal of Sweden is expecting to double its revenue this year and is now investing heavily in its ecommerce operations. The smartphone accessories retailer has move to a new ecommerce platform and is ready to open business in over 30 new markets.

The ecommerce industry in the Nordic countries was worth 230.2 billion Swedish kronor, or 21.87 billion euros, in 2018. The biggest share of this online turnover comes from Sweden, which also has the highest proportion of people shopping online.

Fashion retailer Zalando will expand its relatively new beauty category in Europe. Over the next two months, the German ecommerce company will start selling its beauty products in Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium and Italy.

Zalando has opened a new fulfillment center in Sweden. In Brunna, near Stockholm, the online fashion player has opened a fulfillment center that's approximately 30,000 square meters big and gives place to around 500 employees as well as 50 autonomous mobile robots.

Ecommerce software provider Shopify has acquired the Swedish startup Tictail. The news was confirmed when merchants using Tictail tried to log in and got a message about the ecommerce platform joining Shopify.

Online fashion retailer Chiquelle will soon send items customs free to its customers in Norway. The Swedish company was already active in its neighboring country, but until now Norwegian customers needed to pay a customs processing fee.

Klarna has launched its own financing program for SME retailers in Europe. The new initiative is called Boost and is aimed to further support retailers in accelerating their growth. The company promises the application process will be simple and straightforward.

Zalando, the personal styling service of Zalando, has expanded to Sweden. The company has also made a French version of its service available to its customers in Belgium and Switzerland. Zalon by Zalando is now available in six markets across Europe.

Centra, an ecommerce software provider from Sweden, is ready to conquer the international market. The company, which focuses on online retailers active in the fashion and lifestyle industry, has not made any marketing efforts to date, but is now recruiting marketing, sales and support people to meet the increased demand and to grow internationally.

H&M and Klarna have entered into a global partnership. Among other services, this partnership will power the H&M Club1 payment program, provide an enhanced omnichannel payment offering for customers and a streamlined post-purchase service in the mobile H&M app.

The online branches of H&M Group are slowly surpassing the offline stores when it comes to geographical presence. Four of the total of nine H&M brands are even bigger online than they are in the physical world.

Ecommerce in the Nordic region has increased by 11 percent during the first six months of 2018, compared with the same period last year. Nordic consumers made online purchases worth 10 billion euros. The largest ecommerce country in the region is Sweden, with 4.12 billion euros.

PostNord and Zalando have signed a three year logistics contract, thereby extending the partnership that started when Zalando entered the Nordic market eight years ago. Until mid-2021, PostNord will be the sole supplier of logistics solutions to Zalando in all of PostNord's four markets in the Nordic region.

Ecommerce in Sweden has increased just slightly during last year and was worth 14.5 billion euros at the end of 2017. After an increase of 4.1 percent, the B2C ecommerce turnover of Sweden grew only 400,000 euros compared to the situation in 2016.