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| Company type | Cooperative |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail,Horeca |
| Founded | 1904; 121 years ago (1904) |
| Headquarters | Helsinki ,Finland |
Key people | Timo Santavuo, CEO |
| Products | Groceries, hardware, consumer durables, services. |
| Revenue | €11.71billion(2019) [1] |
| €355million(2018)[1] | |
Number of employees | 37,283(2018)[1] |
| Website | s-ryhma |
TheS Group (Finnish:S-ryhmä,Swedish:S-gruppen) is aFinnishretailingcooperative organisation with its head office inHelsinki.[2] Founded in 1904, it consists of 19 regional cooperatives[3] operating all around Finland in addition to SOK,Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta (The Central Finnish Cooperative Society). S Group operates in themarkets forgroceries,consumer durables,service station,hotel andrestaurant services. It is engaged in close competition withKesko, with which it shares anoligopolistic position in many of the markets it operates in.
The group has businesses inFinland andEstonia. The S Group also had businesses inLatvia andLithuania, but announced withdrawal from these markets in May 2017.[4] It also withdrew from theRussian market in 2022.
The organisation'smember (loyalty) card is calledS-Etukortti.
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. TheBonus 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.
In 2012, 35Members of Parliament were representatives in the S Group or Tradeka (Siwa) corporate governance.[5]
The S Group consists of 19 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 ofBonus was paid.[1]
The S Group operates five distinct chains ofsupermarkets:
The largest sales revenues are from S-market's (49%) and from Prisma's 39%.[1]
The S Group's supermarkets retail the generalprivate brandsRainbow andKotimaista for products made in Finland, and theno-frillsX-tra range in partnership withCoop Trading — a Nordic purchasing organisation for co-operatives. Non-food products are marketed under theHouse name.
The S Group has grown significantly in Finland in recent years, growing both organically and by acquisition.
The S Group is a founding member of the Finnishtrade association forplant-based foods, Pro Vege. In 2022, the S Group pledged that plant-based products would account for 65% of its food sales by 2030. In 2023, it reported that plant-based foods accounted for 60% of sales.[7]
SOK has a key position in the history of Finnish architecture due to its policy in the late 1920s and 1930s of designing cutting-edgeModernist architecture, epitomized by a Functionalist aesthetic of white buildings.[8] The style is calledosuuskauppafunkis (Co-operative Store Functionalism) in Finland.[9] 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) inOulu, the SOK Offices and Warehouse (1931) inRauma, and the Aitta Cooperative Shop (1933) inSauvo. Today, many of these buildings are protected by law.[10]
The S Group also operates theSokos chain ofdepartment stores,ABCservice stations, thehotel chainSokos Hotels, several brands ofrestaurants such asRosso,Sevilla andAmarillo, theAgrimarket chain, which sellsagricultural andDIY supplies, and a number ofcar dealerships forPeugeot.
The S Group operates Finland's first so-calledsupermarket bank, theS-Bank (S-Pankki Oy).
Media related toS-ryhmä at Wikimedia Commons
| Main supermarkets | ||
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| Minor supermarkets | ||
| Discount | ||
| Convenience | ||
| Liquor | ||
| Former | ||
