The S Group is a Finnishretailing cooperative organisation with its head office in Helsinki. Founded in 1904, it consists of 20 regional cooperatives operating all around Finland in addition to SOK, Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta. S Group operates in the markets for groceries, consumer durables, service station, hotel and restaurant services. It is engaged in close competition with Kesko, with which it shares an oligopolistic position in many of the markets it operates in. The group has businesses in Finland, Estonia, and Russia. The S Group also had businesses in Latvia and Lithuania, but announced withdrawal from these markets in May 2017. The organisation's member card is called S-Etukortti.
Ownership
A client can invest a small sum on the local co-operative and become a client-owner. A client-owner gets a membership card, S-Etukortti, which functions as a debit or credit card and gives access to special client-owner bargains. For the sums spent in S Group stores, Bonus is paid back to the client into the account at S-Bank. The Bonus percentage varies from 1% to 5% depending on the sum spent. S-Bank pays an interest that is competitive with interests paid by general banks into savings accounts. S-Etukortti is not a regular "loyalty card" as it represents actual monetary investment and the return is formally profit, not discount.
The S Group consists of 20 regional co-operative enterprises and 7 local co-operative enterprises. In total, these had 2.4 million individual members in 2018, a number that has grown from 1.2 million in 2003. In 2018, 329 million of Bonus was paid.
Supermarkets
The S Group operates five distinct chains of supermarkets:
Sale – a chain of small grocery stores, mainly located in the countryside, small towns and suburbs with an emphasis on service rather than selection. Sale stores often only provide everyday groceries. There are about 240 Sale stores in Finland.
Alepa – this is the equivalent for Sale in the Greater Helsinki region – there are about 110 Alepa stores in Helsinki and the neighbouring cities.
S-market – larger supermarkets with a better selection of goods for sale, and often providing additional services. This is the largest of the S Group's supermarket chains, with nearly 400 stores around Finland. According to HOK-Elanto cooperative, Klaukkala would get another S-market in addition to the existing one, but it will become the most largest S-market to match its size and product range with Prisma.
Prisma – a hypermarket chain with about 90 stores around Finland, Estonia, and Russia in major cities. Formerly, the chain also operated in Latvia and Lithuania.
The largest sales revenues are from S-market's and from Prisma's 39%. The S Group's supermarkets retail the general private brands Rainbow and Kotimaista for products made in Finland, and the no-frillsX-tra range in partnership with :sv:Coop Trading A/S|Coop Trading — a Nordic purchasing organisation for co-operatives. Non-food products are marketed under the House name. The S Group has grown significantly in Finland in recent years, growing both organically and by acquisition.
SOK has a key position in the history of Finnish architecture due to its policy in the late 1920s and 1930s of designing cutting-edge Modernist architecture, epitomized by a Functionalist aesthetic of white buildings. The key architect designing for SOK in the initial years was Erkki Huttunen, who designed various types of buildings for the company: from grain silos and mills to local village shops. Among his best-known works for SOK are the Toppila mill, the SOK Offices and Warehouse in Oulu, the SOK Offices and Warehouse in Rauma, and the Aitta Cooperative Shop in Sauvo. Today, many of these buildings are protected by law.
