Solhem Inredning - "I want to advise others to dare to try"

Art. no. 216385411 24 Apr 2025

In 2011, Erika and her brother Anders took over the business that their father started in 1982. They still have the same premises, warehouse and shop space as when they started, but over the years they have developed and changed the range of the business.

When the business started up they sold textiles and corporate gifts to companies and at that time the premises were mainly an office space with a small exhibition area but over the years it has evolved into a retail space with a warehouse attached. Erika and Anders have a keen interest in interior design and when they took over the business they changed the range to focus more on interior design. With that change, they also started selling to private individuals instead of corporate customers and then they also started up an online store in addition to make it more accessible to their customers.

Now, the small family-owned company has gone from a small showroom to a physical shop and online store with a wide range of designer furniture and interior design.

We spoke to Erika Ullvin for more details:

Solhem combines physical store and webshop

What do you sell in your store?
We sell designer furniture and interior design in Danish design with simple and beautiful design. The furniture is in a consistently Nordic and Scandinavian style and the vision is to cover all rooms in the home and to offer high quality design. The range and style is a celebration of the simple and beautiful - in a sustainable Scandinavian style. Danish design has a strong position in the range with brands such as Oliver Furniture, Hubsch, House Doctor, Madam Stoltz, Sika-Design and Nordal.

Why did you start a webshop in addition to your physical store?
Our physical store is a bit off and hidden and to get increased visibility, we started up a webshop in addition to the physical store. In the beginning, we worked with the webshop as an addition to the physical store and the focus was on the store, but in recent years we have changed our focus and nowadays we focus mostly on the webshop. We have adapted the business to how our customers shop. In the past, people wanted to come to the store to see and feel the goods, but now they prefer to look and read about the products on the website and then order the goods to test the furniture on site. If the goods do not fit, you send them back or return them to our store. Although we have both a webshop and a physical store, we mainly focus on marketing ourselves in the Stockholm area so that we can deliver the goods ourselves. So we strive above all to have a market in Stockholm and the surrounding area, but of course we have customers all over Sweden.

Why did you choose Abicart as your e-commerce platform?
When we were going to start up the webshop in 2011, I read that Abicart was a simple and cheap alternative and since you could test for free, I did it and then I stuck to the platform. For our needs it is more than enough and I appreciate that it is so easy to use. I am really happy with the platform and it suits our business very well. We definitely recommend Abicart, it is a simple and pleasant platform to work in.

What is the best thing about running your own business and webshop?
The best thing about running your own business is that it is fun to work with what you like. I think it is very fun to work with our products. I like when we get new collections so that I can add new pictures and write texts for everything on the website. I like that you get to choose which products to bring in and what to work on, it makes me very inspired and excited to go to work every day. Another good thing is that you can hire out the tasks that you find boring, which in my case is e.g. accounting. You can also adjust how much you want to work in periods by increasing or decreasing advertising. For example, we are closed during the summer v.28-30 and then we take a break in our ads. If we want to sell a lot in periods, we advertise more and run with more work.

Do you have any tips for others who want to start a webshop?
I would like to advise others to dare to try, even though all the pieces of the puzzle are not completely clear. If you're going to run a small business, you don't need to have everything ready from the start. Most things will work out along the way, not everything needs to be ready before you start up. Start small and grow gradually, make sure not to bring in too many suppliers from the start and choose products that are of good quality otherwise there will only be many returns and complaints. It is very easy to incur a lot of costs so keep the expenses in check and do a lot yourself or make sure you know what the cost will be and that it is worth paying for the service.

What subscription do you use and why?
We use the Plus subscription and it suits our business well, we have what we need. In addition to the subscription, we have purchased design help, which we were very pleased with, it really looks the way we wanted according to our wishes.

Visit Solhem's lovely webshop!