Our Story
In 1954, Gunvor and her husband Bengt founded Cellbes! Our CEO Charlotte had a conversation with Gunvor, who has now reached the ripe age of 87. A wonderful encounter and a story that confirms that the Cellbes spirit, which Gunvor laid the foundation for 65 years ago, is very much alive today. Good quality and a satisfied customer were important from the beginning, and even back then, there was a dream to offer a wide range of clothing to women of all shapes and sizes. See Gunvor and Charlotte in conversation and read more about our story here.
70 years in the industry
The story of Cellbes is a story of hard work and more hard work. By 1954, the gross price regulations had been abolished and many fortune seekers, especially in the Borås area, started a mail order business. Not many of them are still around today – as not many of them saw the light in a way that Cellbes did. When Gunvor Hultgren married Bengt, they received a wedding gift of a thousand dollars. They wanted to create something lasting and decided to start a small mail order business in their spare time. There was only one item: Japanese woven fabric. It was delicate, it shrunk in the wash, but it was indestructible. It sold well, and laid the foundations for one of Sweden’s leading mail order companies. Ads appeared in the daily and weekly press, but it wasn’t until 1964 before they issued their own catalog, then in black and white. To this day, the catalog is still an important part of Cellbes’ marketing strategy.
Expansion
The Hultgren couple enjoyed continued growth, with 15,000 items on offer in the early 2000s and around 5,000 daily orders. These were for customers in Sweden and the rest of the Nordic region, including the Faroe Islands and Greenland. The expansion then continued, this time eastwards to Estonia.
New owners
After half a century, the Hultgren family decided to sell the company. Both Gunvor and Bengt had reached retirement age and, in recent years, had slowed down to a normal 40-hour week. Haléns Postorder AB bought Cellbes in the spring of 2004. Cellbes and Halens were acquired by Consortio Invest AB in 2007 and became part of the Consortio Fashion Group. Today, Cellbes is present in nine European markets. Cellbes’ strength lies in its in-house developed range brimming with color and prints, in a unique range of sizes from 34 to 64. In 2012, Cellbes was named one of the Super Companies of the Year by PAR and Veckans Affärer. The postal order company has been complemented by a strong e-commerce business that recently ranked in the top 10 in Internetworld. Cellbes products have always been delivered to the customer’s door, wherever the customer may live. The fact that the new marketing campaign now reaches customers all over the country and is advertised in the weekly press ties the whole thing together, where history meets the future.
