retail specialty founded link ping sterg tland sweden 1963 founder sten ke lindholm headquarters helsingborg sweden area served all nordic countries except iceland products tools household hardware garden supplies electrical supplies car parts website biltema.com biltema is a swedish chain of retail stores specialising in tools car supplies and leisure products . founded in 1963 in link ping sweden biltema also has stores in finland norway and denmark . the company is owned privately by founder sten ke lindholm through dutch company biltema bv . history edit this article contains content that is written like an advertisement . please help improve it by removing promotional content and inappropriate external links and by adding encyclopedic content written from a neutral point of view . may 2014 learn how and when to remove this template message in 1963 the company started with auto parts store under the name handelsbolaget bil tema . the business was mail order sales of automotive parts and accessories . in the first catalog the reader was asked why pay more which became biltema s slogan . biltema lived in a small basement in link ping . after a year the firm expanded mail order business with a small shop also in the same basement . the policy of buying directly from the manufacturer led to biltema soon began to look up where the manufacture of the various products were made . back in the late 1970s the company began building strategic sourcing contacts around the world . sten ke s strong technical interest frequently led to several of the major manufacturers listened to biltema s requirements and together developed the quality products beyond what was standard . several of these improvements has also come out to the market as a very well known brands . in 1976 sales have risen to about 25 million and the company moved to new premises of the torvinge area in link ping . local surface was 6 000 square meters big and contained both mail order central warehouse and a shop of almost 250 square meters . this store then expanded to about 2 700 square meters in the early 1980s . in 1983 biltema opened the first store outside link ping . it was also outside sweden namely in norway . the norwegian establishment was followed in 1985 by a similar establishment in finland . external links edit biltema sweden biltema norway biltema finland biltema denmark this swedish corporation or company article is a stub . you can help wikipedia by expanding it . v t e retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title biltema & oldid 743884012 categories hardware storesretail companies of swedenswedish brandsswedish company stubshidden categories pages using infobox company with unsupported parametersarticles with a promotional tone from may 2014all articles with a promotional toneall stub articles navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages dansknorsk bokm lnorsk nynorsksuomisvenska edit links this page was last modified on 11 october 2016 at 20 36 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view