A Strategic Hub for E-commerce Growth

Helsingborg’s unique advantages, including its location in the Øresund region, a strong tradition of trade, and a well-developed logistics network have made it a magnet for e-commerce businesses. The city is home to a mix of global giants and innovative startups, all benefiting from a supportive ecosystem that spans technology development, marketing, and international expansion.

“Working with international clients requires an international mindset – something that is easy in Helsingborg, as just looking out of the office you see Denmark and all the international shipping companies operating thru this busy part of the world.”

said Pierre Grönborg, CEO of HDL Commerce

Key Contributors to the Region’s Success

The region hosts headquarters, warehouses, and key operations for some of Sweden’s most prominent e-commerce brands, including IKEA, NA-KD, CDON, Tailor Store, Boozt, and Coolstuff. While IKEA’s digital operations alone employ 1,300 people in Helsingborg, the report excludes its revenue from the 8 billion SEK generated by local e-commerce businesses. This includes many medium-sized companies generating between 10 to 100 million SEK annually such as gents.se, 4dogs, uteprodukter.se, nybryggt.nu and soulfactory.se.

“Helsingborg combines a long tradition as a trading city with a strong culture of innovation and a strategic position as one of Sweden’s leading logistics hubs, making it a natural base for leading e-commerce players,”

said Soraya Axelsson, Director of Business Development at the City of Helsingborg

Employment Growth and Economic Impact

E-commerce employment in Helsingborg has surged from 5,250 in 2021 to 7,000 in 2024, reflecting the sector’s dynamic growth. The industry offers a mix of highly skilled tech and marketing roles alongside entry-level logistics and customer service positions, making it an attractive destination for talent. Also AI and tech companies within the field have emerged in recent years, such as Quickbutik, HDL Commerce and Contentor.

“We work every day with e-commerce companies looking to grow beyond their home markets. Being able to support them on that journey from Helsingborg, where we have close ties to our clients and a genuine international perspective, is something we find both natural and inspiring.”

says Rabie Salem, CEO at Contentor

You can read more about the report here:

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”I’ve really appreciated my time at Drivhuset in Malmö. It has been rewarding to work with young people who want to realize their business ideas, but I’ve also been missing running companies myself and have been longing to work with fast-growing companies again, ” Sofia comments the decision to move on.

Contentor increased sales by 40 percent during the last fiscal year and was named ”Gasellföretag 2017″ by Dagens Industri. On August 31, the company closed its fiscal year with a turnover for 2016/2017 of SEK 16.5 million (1 724 000 €). Together with the sister company Contentor Marketing the Contentor Group reached a turnover of SEK 18 million SEK (1 880 500 €).

With the recruitment of Sofia Franzén as Business Director, Contentor Marketing AB is merging with the sister company Contentor AB. The former Business Director, Linnea Vikbrant, has been recruited by the startup Fieldly, where she becomes Communications Manager.

Passionate about scaling and making companies grow

Sofia Franzén has extensive experience working with startup companies and is passionate about how to grow companies. Content and communication play a crucial role in ensuring that companies achieve their vision and growth goals she says:

“Entrepreneurs easily gets blinded by technology and think technology will be the success of itself, but without content that can communicate with the customer, it can be hard to reach out.”

At Contentor Marketing, Sofia will scale up the business that today focuses on subscription-based editorial services.

”My strength lies in building companies. But I’m also driven by getting people to work together in strong teams.” Sofia says in a pressrelease from Contentor.

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“We have for some time been looking for a partner who can take over the operation and responsibility for AlphaGeek. With Sortiment.se we get a committed partner, who not only has previous experience of AlphaGeek’s products, but who also knows how to run the business effectively” says Anders Andersen, CEO of Net Departo.

Sortiment.se has a long-term strategy to build a broad portfolio of e-commerce stores, which will provide a broad product catalogue for the Scandinavian consumers. The acquisition of AlphaGeek is an important one; the size of it helps Sortiment.se to build their infrastructure for e-commerce.

”We are happy and excited about the acquisition of AlphaGeek. The company is not only an icon in the Swedish e-commerce, but also a store with a niche and product range that suits us as individuals really good” says Anton Troedson, founder of Sortiment.se and new CEO of AlphaGeek.

Sortiment.se, is also based in the region, being in Eslöv, and is a smaller company than RoligaPrylar, so in that way the company is taking the entire business to a new level. This merger of Sortiment.se and AlphaGeek will make them to one of the larger e-commerce store in Scandinavia for toys, presents and gadgets with an approximate turnover in 2015 of 4 million €. The main competitor is also in this region – with Malmö-based Coolstuff, which reported a turnover of just below € 11 million last year.

Roliga Prylar got a lot of attention when the site was started for being run by Dan Nilsson, who became famous for his open and transparent blogging about it and other ventures (you can read the old blogposts here). Dan sold the majority of the company to Net Departo in 2013, and now the company has changed hands completely. Dan has since moved on to new projects in the e-commerce sector, being one of the co-founders of Fyndiq, as well as behind the largest Scandinavian e-commerce community ehandel.se and co-founder of the translation service Contentor (transparency: Karsten Deppert, who is the initiator of this site, is also a co-founder at Contentor). He also just recently making news with two new ambitious projects: e-handelsindex and the E-commerce Park of Sweden.

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Indexing the entire e-commerce scene

Development of the e-commerce index (Ehandelsindex) tool began in 2010. A year later Dan Nilsson landed at number 20 with this project in the list of entrepreneurs of the year. Today, four years later, e-commerce index is finally launched in beta version and has already listed over 11,000 e-commerce ventures in Sweden – the starting point of for it. The service gathers data automatically and is the most comprehensive information about Sweden’s e-commerce available, and companies are verified and reviewed manually.

The interesting part of the index is that it connects company’s data with many e-retailers to show profitability, sales and economic development of various industries over time. There is also an opportunity to use some external data sources, but this feature is not yet available.

“E-commerce index is currently available in beta and we’re still working to fine-tune all parameters and the system in general. We are also working to align all the classifications and measurements. Our journey has begun, but we are certainly not at its goal yet,” says Dan Nilsson

If you check e-commerce index, you can find plenty of interesting information about the industry in general. For example, how many Swedish e-retailers accept Bitcoin (0.22%) or whether delivery service makes any difference for company’s performance (companies using PostNord services are observed to have higher profitability than those that use DHL, but both have positive incomes). At the same time, e-commerce index offers plenty of information about individual companies which includes data on their latest financial statements, credit rating, profit margin and much more.

There is a number of reports about about e-commerce industry and its performance such as by DIBS, PostNord, and HUI. The main shortcoming of such reports is that they are survey-based. With the help of e-commerce index, however, it will be possible to also get some hard numbers for more detailed industry analysis.

Physical space for e-commerce

The newly created E-commerce Park of Sweden, in turn, will enhance e-commerce by helping companies to solve the most common problems related to logistics, operations or warehouses. Co-founded by Dan Nilsson and Karsten Deppert (transperancy: Karsten Deppert is also the initiator of this site), the e-commerce park is located in Helsingborg, that has perfect combination of entrepreneurship and logistics.

“We start with about 2,000 sqm of office space and 5,000 sqm warehouse. The hope is that already within 2 years there will be growing need to expand,” says Karsten Deppert, co-founder.

The park is also planned to become a hub of energy, creativity and effective solutions that will help entrepreneurs in the e-commerce field to learn quicker from each-other and help the industry to flourish.

Dan and Karsten have already previously a joint company, the webcontent and translation service Contentor. This is the second time they co-found an e-commerce related venture.

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Impressive international presens

The conference had an impressive lineup of speakers, both regional ones as well as international guests. Amongst the most prominent where Praveen Sinha, co-founder of indian e-tail giant Jabong, as well as Andrew Murphy from John Lewis, with an online business of over 1 billion euros.

It was also an event with a lot of online services and crowd-funding on stage. Daniel Cowen from 3Doodler in Hongkong was there and told insights into how they raised $ 2.3 million.
Former Ryan air director Sinead Finn talked about how they build the carrier from 2 routes to begin Europes largest airline – as well as how she now helps startups getting into the travel industry.

Great regional people

Speakers from this region included some very prominent people.

Mikael Olander, who build cdon into the largest e-commerce in the nordics, before leaving and now doing the same with Bygghemma / Trademax, talked about lessons and insights. The importance of a great team was one of his important points, but he also confessed that he might have been to unwilling to invest in tech in his earlier days, something he aims with doing better. He als otalked about growth:

“We have had 50% organic growth year on year for the past 4 years, and plan on continue with that.”

Hermann Haraldsson from Boozt talked about their journey, and how they are a truly Øresund company – being danish but based in Malmö. He shared insights into building the company to what it is now, as well as rough patches along the way. Hermann also talked about how they manage to find great employees, mostly by tapping into the expat communities in the region – which brings really great people and is still a channel not used by a lot of companies.

Also on stage was Jan Höjman from Tailorstore, talking about their impressive organic growth and their take on building a sustainable business – with being present and making life for their factory workers in Sri Lanka an important part in their success.

Jesper Kärrbrink from Euroflorist also shared interesting insights. Amongst other that they where one of the first business to start with ecommerce in the world.

Great reception

The event was a great success. Our own Karsten Deppert was on stage as side-kick, representing his company Contentor which is active in the e-commerce field.

“Remarkable great line-up, and a wide variety of insights and lessons shared on stage. Really great that an event this big and international is placed in this region.” said Karsten.

Awards and prizes

On the evening there was also the Nordic Ecommerce Awards, where a lot of prizes where announced. From this region two companies won prizes:
Gulnaz Khusainova from Easysize won the ’newcomer of the year award’, and Jenny Nilsson from BlackBaloon won the ‘student of the year award’, which is given out to the most brilliant participant at the eCommerce Academy courses.

If you want to know more, ehandel.se has a long write-up, which gives even further insights. Next Nordic eCommerce Summit was announced in May in Stockholm, and then in November 2015 again in Malmö. We are happy that the event will continue to be held here in the future.

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Brads talk was great, and I think he has a lot of good points. However I think we are missing one more thing in the region and there was another factor he might not have known about that is important.

One thing missing – and one thing needs improving

“Good money”
There is no shortage of money in the region, especially not if you look at the business angels (€ 50k – 100k) or seed levels (€ 500k – 2.5M). There are plenty of wealthy individuals that can fund with these amounts, either alone or in Angel syndicates. However, what is missing is Good Money – because most of those that are wealthy enough have too little investment experience. There are too many investments happening that seem good at the start, but turn sour in a year or two.

I have myself witnessed four startups that have failed so far this year, all of them not because of a poor product, or insufficient sales channels – but because they all have taken in angel investors at a too low valuation. That has ruined all four of them.

Update, 6 oct: OK, maybe “too low valuation” is a too simplistic way to express it, but the problem was to a large extend that the investments had one or more of the following flaws: 1) was at a valuation which made it unattractive for future investors 2) involved terms that made it unattractive for future investors 3) the investor(s) did or could not help the company secure future investments.

This is a big problem, as the money did not seem “bad” when it was agreed upon – it just wasn’t good enough. The problem is that the too low early valuation (under $1M valuation at the early stage) makes the startup un-attractive for further fundings, which are often required. In at least one of the cases the only persons that could invest further when the startup needed money where the original investors, who ended up owning over 50% of the startups before it closed it’s services – not a good recipe for creating a growing company.

This is one of the reasons I push for reporting on investments and funding – we need more knowledge about that, so that unnecessary mistakes are avoided. Mistakes that often take 1-2 years to truly show themselves. There is a more or less ready framework based in Silicon Valleys investments, that framework needs to be applied here as well, so that we do not waste time on details but can instead grow companies.

(if you are interested in knowing more, I have high hopes of the Investment Lab event next week to provide good input regarding funding)

Bridging the clusters
Bridging is actually not meant as a pun in regard to the Øresund Bridge, but between all the clusters in the region, both within Copenhagen and between / within the cites Malmö / Lund / Helsingborg. There are many networks and locations in the region, all large enough to be self-sustainable – but with the down-side that they are too big to seek further integration with other clusters. This is not to say the people inside them don’t want to mingle with others – when asked almost everybody says they want to meet more people with experience, and sometimes go on and complain that “the startups scene in [insert city name here] is so small”. So there is a will. However, going to events outside ones cluster requires energy: first to find the events and knowing about them in the first place, and then to actually going there. I think getting more collaboration requires hard work and commitment – it does not just happen, you need to do it yourself. You have to seek out others, take the time to go to events where you don’t know anybody and reach out and invite them to yours.

But if it is hard work, why would you want to do it? The answer here is actually connected to the previous point about funding – even in our region, with all the experience and startups here, there still are too many bad investments being made. By better connections, better understanding and better sharing of knowledge between us we could have, and should, avoid that more startups get ruined because of both the entrepreneurs and the investors know too little or had to few reference points.

There is also some very niched clusters, such as Mobile Heights Business Center or Media Evolution City, which gathers a lot of special expertise – so it is not just about funding, but about knowledge in general.

An entrepreneur is never worried about hard work, he is only worried if it is worth it. And getting to know people with more experience is definitely worth it.

One year ago and now

I started this site a little over a year ago, because I felt there where two things missing: no good way to get international attention to the startups here (which I had seen do a lot while in Berlin), and too little awareness about what other startups there are in the region. I therefor choose to focus on news about funding (as fundings validate a startup and tells other entrepreneurs that it is worth keeping that startups name in mind) and events (as that helps people find other people).

Some things not as expected
Now one year later, I can say it did not go as I imagined. Some things are slower: event participation outside ones own cluster still is unusual, even if I know that at least some ambitious people have taken the time to participate in events a bit further away. Also interesting: the ones that are prone to do that are either the most prominent entrepreneurs, or somehow involved in the startup scene “glue” – so anyone participating from an outside cluster is often a very interesting person to talk to!

Awareness about other startups might be better: if entrepreneurs are more aware of other startups is a question I actually cannot answer. I would like to think it is, just because of people reading startup names in headers or articles. But I do not know. A little over a year ago, before I started the site, I could name just four startups in the entire region outside my own core cluster: 23 Video, Crunchfish, Saplo and Foap. And still I was rather active in the entrepreneurial scene already. So if I was anything of a normal entrepreneur then I hope you that are read this can name at least a couple of more outside of your direct close ties. But it is still not at a level where everyone knows what successes we have had in the region – I myself still find new success-stories on a monthly basis!

Some things better then expected
However, some things have gone really great. I feel that a lot of players are keen to have other clusters in mind when new initiatives are started, and that I think is the best change I have seen. That I can hear people getting ideas for new events, and thinking “we should make sure that we get people from [insert city name] interested as well!”. That makes me always happy.

But what I think is the best so far is the Øresund Startups Facebook “community group” that I started at the same time. It has gotten a lot of users, and features regularly interesting discussions – either about startups, funding and entrepreneurship, or about the region. Such as the thread right now about what clusters there really are in the region. It also serves for posting about events and getting people to help each other out, which I think is great.
In the begining I was worried that the group might get to heavy from one “side”, with either Danes or Swedes “taking over” – which I was worried would upset my goal of having english as the language in the group. But that has worked out fine so far, and english seems to work really well.

Third lesson for a great startup community

And sticking to english also thought me a lesson Brad did not mention in his talk. I think mostly because he might not have realized it: I would say using English is an important factor for building startup community.
I think the reason for it is simple – it opens the community to people that contribute a lot, which to suprising large extent are immigrants or expats. Of all the people that contribute the most right now, creating events and getting the community going, less then half are born in the region. Just looking at the contributors we have had here on Øresund Startups, more then half are native from outside Scandinavia.
Immigration can be both regional and across borders – either from another part of the country, or from another country. I myself am one of those, being born in Berlin.

I had no idea that this would be the case, and that choosing english proved to be important in this regard as well – because foreigners could suddenly engage and feel they can contribute, even if they did not know good swedish or danish.

With all that said, I am happy that I started the site and that we seem to be achieving thing in the region. Now lets get to it creating even better things!

Oh, and if you want to learn more and meet me, I will hold the lunch-seminar “state of the Øresund Startups region” on the 22th Oct, at SHIP CreativeLab.

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Now Roliga Prylar takes it’s first steps outside Sweden. With the launch of Alphageek.dk, the Danish site is up and running (even if still some improvements left to do according to Dan).

“We have ambitious plans for growth, a big part of this growth will come from new markets with focus on the nordic countries. We launched Denmark first because it was the first country to be ready. Finland will launch next week and Norway before july is over.”

This is one of the many changes that has happened to Roliga Prylar the last year – getting investments from Net Departo Ventures being another big change, as well as out-sourcing their warehouse, something Dan earlier was very sceptic towards.

About launching under a different brand in Denmark, he says:

“We wanted a name that positioned us against the competition. We’re not mainstream, our main target customer is the geeks, gamers and nerds. And these days Geek is not a bad thing any more, but rather something people aspire to be. So basically we want a name people remember. The Alpha Geek is the most prominent geek in the office, the person with the most Objective C-books, the person who memorized 500 decimals of Pi, basically the person all geeks want to become”

Appart from the fact that the name “roliga prylar” might not have been so good in Danish anyway – given the very big difference in the meaning of the word “rolig” in Swedish (rolig=fun) compared to Danish (rolig=calm).

If the new brand will be used in Sweden as well in the future is still not comfirmed, where the site still operates under the Roliga Prylar name.

Transperacy: Dan Nilsson is also co-founder of Contentor, where I also am co-founder. Also Retevo AB, the company behind Alphageek / Roliga Prylar just moved into their offices at SHIP co-working space, which my company is in charge off. This has nothing to do with the article but should be mentioned as I believe in honesty and transparency /Karsten

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Rebecca Brodd has previously worked with K2C and Resource Group, a company that provides support services for e-retailers. This, powered by Dan Nilsson’s technical experience and skills in e-commerce and Karsten Deppert’s expertise in business development and management, will help to create a strong working team that will satisfy customers’ needs and demands.

Among other points on Contentor’s growth agenda are introduction of the new CMS support platform for better file management, expansion of the language pool, and provision of better integration with other systems and ongoing translations.

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So what happened there? A lot! While there wasn’t enough time to see and talk to everyone, there was a great range of companies with unique ideas, at various stages. From those just getting their plans down on the brown paper to others scaling up stage and fully operational, it was a lot of activity and exchange of ideas, and great for mingling.

Lots of ideas to watch, and here is just a small sample of those on show:

A nice first event for IDD to come Malmö! Next Internet Day with .SE at the Stockholm Waterfront November 25-26, 2013

Pic: Johan Jörgensen presents Best in Show to Alexander Zolotarevski, courtesy of Erik Starck

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