ICA focuses on health and beauty in ICA stores and winds up Etos in Sweden
ICA focuses on health and beauty in ICA stores and winds up Etos in Sweden
Solna 4 December, 2006
ICA will focus further on the health and beauty concept within the ICA stores and is initiating a process to wind up its subsidiary Etos AB, which operates within beauty and healthcare retailing.
- Etos has contributed with a cutting-edge competence within beauty and health, which has created a good foundation to develop the concept further, says Ingrid Jonasson Blank, executive vice president ICA AB. By winding up Etos we are releasing resources to be used to continue establishing and developing beauty and health departments, initially within Maxi ICA Stormarknad, and in the future within the other ICA formats.
The winding up of Etos AB will have an insignificant effect on ICA ABs profit and loss statement as well as on the balance sheet.
Etos was launched in Sweden in 2002 and has seven stores with in total 35 employees in Stockholm, Linköping and Västerås. Net sales in 2005 amounted to SEK 35 million. The business concept of Etos is imported from Holland where Etos has been present for 80 years and has 457 stores. The Dutch Etos is a subsidiary of Ahold.
For further information, please contact: Ingrid Jonasson Blank, Executive Vice President ICA AB, phone: +46 8 561 502 86 ICA press hotline, phone +46 70 253 66 60
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About ICA The ICA Group is one of the Nordic regions leading retail companies, with around 2,100 of its own and retailer-owned stores in Sweden and Norway. The Group includes the sales companies ICA Sverige, ICA Norge and Etos. ICA also offers financial services to Swedish customers through ICA Banken. ICA owns half of the companies Rimi Baltic, with 200 stores in the Baltic countries, and Netto Marknad, with nearly 80 stores in Sweden. ICA AB is a joint venture 40% owned by Hakon Invest AB and 60% by Royal Ahold of the Netherlands. Due to shareholder agreement, neither party has control of the company and both share equal voting power. Through Royal Ahold, ICA AB is part of an international retail network. For more information, please visit http://www.ica.se