Gekås Ullared AB is a Swedish
superstore in
Ullared
Ullared is a locality situated in Falkenberg Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 791 inhabitants in 2010.
The village hosts a large department store, Gekås. It is the largest store in both Sweden and Scandinavia, and the growth of the sto ...
, Sweden, founded in 1963 by
Göran Karlsson as ''Ge-kås Manufaktur''. It had an annual turnover of
SEK 4.2 billion in 2010, with a total store area of over in addition to a storage area just a few hundred yards away. In 2013, Malin Helde became
CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
of the store, while Boris Lennerhov became CEO of the parent company. The store is visited annually by approximately 4.5 million customers, with the 2007 record of 26,200 for a single day, and the average customer travelling 150 km to get to the store. The store has recently opened a camping ground and a motel to accommodate long-distance travellers. It has been known for avoiding conventional advertising, instead relying on
word of mouth
Word of mouth is the passing of information from person to person using oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a ...
. For three years starting in 2011, a
reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring ordinary people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 1990s ...
series, ''
Ullared
Ullared is a locality situated in Falkenberg Municipality, Halland County, Sweden, with 791 inhabitants in 2010.
The village hosts a large department store, Gekås. It is the largest store in both Sweden and Scandinavia, and the growth of the sto ...
'', was filmed in and around the store. It aired in both Norway and Sweden.
On 25 July 2011, the superstore was visited by record 29,500 customers during the day. The longest queue outside the superstore ever was recorded on 30 October 2010, when the queue was longer than 1.4 km. Through Gekås' website, potential customers can monitor the queue length. A barometer as measure indicates the length of the queue outside the building. Additionally, two web cameras give additional information about the situation at the entry. In 2011, over 122 million items passed the store's checkouts. The checkout has today about 60 cashiers. The department store's product range consists of over 100,000 items. The value of the goods available in the store is $4.9 million. A fully loaded truck delivers items every 10 minutes.
Gekås central warehouse has a size of 15000 square metres and holds about 10,000 pallets. Every 30 minutes all-year-round a new truck arrives. During peak season the entire store will be emptied in less than two business days.
Facilities belonging to Gekås
Beyond the continuously expanded shopping center, Gekås operates Sweden's largest all-year-round campground. A lake for swimming with fountain is located in short walking distance from the campground and the huge parking lot.
The parking lot, with 3200 spaces, is considered Sweden's largest parking lot.
Gekås build the recent years a car museum (now closed and market as convention center), a motel and a business hotel. On the road towards Ätran on the outskirt of Ullared is a warehouse with additional parking and dog kindergarten. Buses are running between the different locations for transportation of shoppers.
The former museum showed Göran Karlsson's car collection, where a DeLorean as in the motion picture "Back to the Future" was used, was part of the collection.
History
* 1963 – Store founded in Ullared by Göran Karlsson.
* 1967 – The store moves to a bigger building.
* 1971 – The store changes location again, to its current location.
* 1991 – Göran Karlsson sells the company to "six of his closest employees".
* 2003 – The market court forbids Göran Karlsson, who had started a competing business, from using the word "Ullared" in his marketing.
Dom i Marknadsdomstolen
Notes
* Ullared - byn som blev ett varumärke, Torsten Andersson. 2003. Falkenberg: Ge-kås Ullared AB.
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gekas
Falkenberg Municipality
Shopping centres in Sweden
1963 establishments in Sweden
20th-century establishments in Halland County