Ekokul - from dream to successful e-commerce

Art. no. 216462983 24 Apr 2025

Niclas and Anna are the founders of the successful e-commerce Ekokul. From dream to successful business, Niclas shares their exciting journey of building a successful e-commerce, the freedom of running a webshop and valuable tips for those who want to start their own webshop.

What do you sell in your shop?

Our original business idea was to offer organic and fair trade toys and baby products, so our customers were mainly parents with young children. We wanted to sell toys that would be the obvious choice over mass-produced plastic toys without a second thought. With increased awareness, our customers have broadened their demand for good goods in other product categories as well, so you could say that it is thanks to our customers that we can now offer goods in hygiene, health, cleaning, household, etc. We are always grateful for our customers' feedback, which gives us tips on items that are missing from the conventional trade. With the broadened range, we now have customers of all ages. Parents with older children continue to be loyal to us even when the toy age has passed.

Why did you decide to set up an online shop?

The idea for Ekokul was born in 2007. My wife Anna and I had always discussed different business ideas and had a dream of running our own business. When we realized that there was a gap in the market for organic and environmentally friendly toys and children's products, we started working on launching a webshop. We looked towards England, the USA and even Italy and found a number of products that became the first small range in Ekokul's webshop that we launched in June 2008.

How has your e-commerce developed since the start?

Turnover has remained roughly at the same level for all the years we have been trading online. We have chosen not to expand, but instead to keep the company quite personal and small in order to retain our own freedom, but also the feeling of a company that cares and takes care of its customers. The company has been and is a one-man business and we outsource what we cannot do ourselves. For example, another company takes care of our warehouse and packs our goods.

In which countries do you sell your products?

We started our sales in Sweden, but now we also have a Finnish and a Danish online store with customer service in both Finnish and Danish. Some sales also go to Norway, but that's not a market we actively pursue.

What made you choose Abicart as your e-commerce platform?

When we started in 2008, there were not many Swedish e-commerce platforms to choose from. A survey of different platforms had given Textalk a good rating and the price was also appealing. It was a perfect platform for a start-up company that did not want to incur too much initial cost and where it was relatively easy to create your own store by trying things out.

What are the main challenges you faced in running an e-commerce business and how did you overcome them?

Google is and has always been the biggest challenge. The rules of the game for SEO are constantly changing and organic search results have been pushed further and further down by search and shopping ads. Getting conversions through organic searches has become more difficult and today we have to advertise significantly more to drive traffic to our webshop.

How do you market your webshop?

We have worked continuously with SEO and content marketing since the start, which has given us a healthy balance in our traffic mix. Organic traffic, bloggers and media attention have given us a lot of free traffic. We have worked with newsletters since the start and managed to build a really good customer database that still pays good dividends. We have only done a few tests with analog advertising. When we were a start-up company, our business idea was quite unique and we got a lot of media attention which provided free marketing. Today, we market ourselves primarily through Google Shopping, but also some collaborations with bloggers and influencers. But we get the best marketing through our customers. It costs nothing and gives the best results.

How have you managed to compete in the market and stand out from similar e-retailers?

Competition has really intensified over the last 5 years and today there are several stores that have the same or similar business concept. In addition, the largest e-commerce companies have started to sell several of the products that we were previously alone in promoting in our store. We have worked a lot with newsletters, social media and a fast and service-oriented customer service that really makes customers happy. Over the years, we have also built up a certain amount of trust and have been very keen on customer relations and customer satisfaction. This means that customers buy from us again because they know that we do not sell just any items, but good things that we ourselves can stand for.

What are the main advantages of running a webshop?

Definitely the freedom to be your own boss and manage your own time. It's hard to get rich from a webshop, but the freedom that the work provides means many times more than a high salary. You always have your work in your pocket on your mobile phone and can manage your webshop wherever you are in the world. There is no better job.

How have you used feedback from customers and visitors to the webshop to improve the store and the customer experience?

We get a lot of nice and good feedback from our customers, but unfortunately we have been bad at showing this in our store. It is something we should get better at and market to new customers.

What subscription do you use with us and why?

We use the PLUS subscription. We have had it almost all years. We have not benefited from PRO because we do not have connections to business systems.

Which functions/integrations are important to you?

The ability to use the same admin and article register for several different webshops in different languages. It would have been too difficult to administer several stores if the different languages had been in different admin systems.

What future plans do you have for your webshop?

In the long term, we need to do a facelift of the store because it was a few years ago that we updated the design.

What advice would you give to others who are thinking of starting a webshop?

Think long-term and be persistent. Expect it to take at least 5 years to build up a webshop that starts generating a profit. Do as much of the work yourself as possible in the beginning to keep costs down. Work actively with SEO, it pays off in the long run. Read up on SEO and do the work yourself, it will usually be both better and cheaper, Niclas concludes.