The S Group ( fi, S-ryhmä, sv, S-gruppen) is a Finnish

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and th ...

ing

cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...

organisation with its head office in

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

. Founded in 1904, it consists of 20 regional cooperatives operating all around Finland in addition to SOK, ''Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta'' (The Central Finnish Cooperative Society). S Group operates in the markets for groceries, consumer durables, service station,

hotel A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. Facilities provided inside a hotel room may range from a modest-quality mattress in a small room to large suites with bigger, higher-quality beds, a dresser, a ref ...

and restaurant services. It is engaged in close competition with Kesko, with which it shares an oligopolistic position in many of the markets it operates in. The group has businesses in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bo ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

, and

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

. The S Group also had businesses in

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

and Lithuania, but announced withdrawal from these markets in May 2017. The organisation's member (loyalty) card is called ''S-Etukortti''.

Ownership

A client can invest a small sum on the local co-operative and become a client-owner. (The exact sum is decided by the local co-operative board and varies significantly depending on local conditions.) A client-owner gets a membership card, ''S-Etukortti'', which functions as a debit or credit card and gives access to special client-owner bargains. For the sums spent in S Group stores, ''Bonus'' is paid back to the client into the account at S-Bank. The ''Bonus'' percentage varies from 1% to 5% depending on the sum spent. S-Bank pays an interest that is competitive with interests paid by general banks into savings accounts. ''S-Etukortti'' is not a regular "loyalty card" as it represents actual monetary investment and the return is formally profit, not discount.

Corporate

35 members of parliament in 2012 were representatives in the S Group or Tradeka (Siwa) corporate governance.

Local co-operatives

The S Group consists of 20 regional co-operative enterprises and 7 local co-operative enterprises. In total, these had 2.4 million individual members in 2018, a number that has grown from 1.2 million in 2003. In 2018, 329 million euros of ''Bonus'' was paid.

Supermarkets

The S Group operates five distinct chains of

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more lim ...

s: * '' Sale'' – a chain of small grocery stores, mainly located in the countryside, small towns and suburbs with an emphasis on service rather than selection. Sale stores often only provide everyday groceries. There are about 240 Sale stores in Finland. * ''

Alepa Alepa is a grocery shop chain in the Greater Helsinki region of Finland. It is currently owned by HOK-Elanto, a part of the nationwide cooperative S Group. Alepa was founded in 1918, when Edvard Pajunen and his wife founded a shop in Sörnäinen, ...

'' – this is the equivalent for ''Sale'' in the

Greater Helsinki Greater Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin seutu, Suur-Helsinki, Swedish: ''Helsingforsregionen'', ''Storhelsingfors'') is the metropolitan area surrounding Helsinki, the capital city of Finland. It includes the smaller Capital Region (''Pääkaupunkiseutu ...

region – there are about 110 Alepa stores in

and the neighbouring cities. * ''S-market'' – larger supermarkets with a better selection of goods for sale, and often providing additional services. This is the largest of the S Group's supermarket chains, with nearly 400 stores around Finland. According to HOK-Elanto cooperative, Klaukkala would get another S-market in addition to the existing one, but it will become the largest S-market to match its size and product range with ''Prisma''. * '' Prisma'' – a

hypermarket A hypermarket (sometimes called a hyperstore, supercentre or superstore) is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including ...

chain with about 90 stores around

, and

in major cities. Formerly, the chain also operated in Latvia and Lithuania. *Food Market Herkku - premier food market operating in the Finnish metropolitan area (Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa), Oulu, Tampere and Turku. The largest sales revenues are from S-market's (49%) and from Prisma's 39%. The S Group's supermarkets retail the general private brands ''Rainbow'' and ''Kotimaista'' for products made in Finland, and the no-frills ''X-tra'' range in partnership with Coop Trading — a Nordic purchasing organisation for co-operatives. Non-food products are marketed under the ''House'' name. The S Group has grown significantly in Finland in recent years, growing both organically and by acquisition.

Modernist architecture

SOK has a key position in the history of Finnish architecture due to its policy in the late 1920s and 1930s of designing cutting-edge

Modernist architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...

, epitomized by a Functionalist aesthetic of white buildings. The key architect designing for SOK in the initial years was Erkki Huttunen (1901–1956), who designed various types of buildings for the company: from grain silos and mills to local village shops. Among his best-known works for SOK are the Toppila mill (1929, ''pictured right''), the SOK Offices and Warehouse (1937-38) in

Oulu Oulu ( , ; sv, Uleåborg ) is a city, municipality and a seaside resort of about 210,000 inhabitants in the region of North Ostrobothnia, Finland. It is the most populous city in northern Finland and the fifth most populous in the country after ...

, the SOK Offices and Warehouse (1931) in Rauma, and the Aitta Cooperative Shop (1933) in Sauvo. Today, many of these buildings are protected by law.Jokinen, Teppo (1992). ''Erkki Huttunen liikelaitosten ja yhteisöjen arkkitehtina 1928–1939''. Jyväskylä Studies in the Arts, 41. Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän yliopisto.

Other fields

The S Group also operates the '' Sokos'' chain of

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

s, ''ABC'' service stations, the

chain '' Sokos Hotels'', several brands of restaurants such as ''Rosso'', ''Sevilla'' and ''Amarillo'', the ''Agrimarket'' chain, which sells

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled peopl ...

and DIY supplies, and a number of

car A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods. The year 1886 is regarded as t ...

dealerships for

Peugeot Peugeot (, , ) is a French brand of automobiles owned by Stellantis. The family business that preceded the current Peugeot companies was founded in 1810, with a steel foundry that soon started making hand tools and kitchen equipment, and then ...

S-Bank

The S Group operates Finland's first so-called ''supermarket bank'', the

S-Bank S-Bank Plc ( fi, S-Pankki Oyj, sv, S-Banken Abp) is the bank of the S-Group (Finnish: S-ryhmä), a Finnish retailing cooperative organisation. S-Bank is the first so-called ''supermarket bank'' in Finland with 4872 employees. Changes in legis ...

(S-Pankki Oy).

References

External links

S-Kanava
– The company portal
S-Kanava
– The company portal
S-Kanava
– The company portal {{Supermarkets in Lithuania Cooperatives in Finland Supermarkets of Finland Retail companies of Finland