BoOhlssons is a storied place: its immortal advertising jingle—“BoOhlssons i Tomelilla / här får du mest för pengarna!“—is an earworm that haunts Skånska people of a certain age, even though it hasn’t been broadcast in years. The Tomelilla firm was famous for its low-priced consumer goods, to which shoppers flocked from all over the county: here you could find everything from toys to tools, all produced at the lowest possible price, and—not coincidentally—at the lowest level of environmental compliance.
Suffice to say, the BoOhlssons business model did not fit well with Tomelilla municipality’s turn to the “donut economics” model in the early 2020s: the excessive consumption, and the vast parking lots filled with cars that had driven from afar, were big red blobs in the city’s carbon accounting. But as a major local employer, the company had a kingmaker’s stronghold over local politics, and knew whose phone-number to ring.
In 2026, Tomelilla got some much-anticipated news: after four wasted years of misrule and Trumpian performativity, all political parties in parliament finally agreed on goals for emissions stemming from Swedish consumption. While the decision was weak in many respects, more policies followed in subsequent years, slowly chipping away at consumption emissions. Chief among these measures were the emissions quotas applied to municipalities and individuals alike, which all but annihilated BoOhlsson’s business model: what is the use of a massive warehouse if shoppers can only purchase a few items each?
The firm wisely chose to change with the times—perhaps due to a generational shift in its ownership—and refocus on the growing need for repairs and spare parts, as Swedes became more frugal with their possessions. BoOhlssons invested in state-of-the-art 3D printers, with which they produced custom parts for whatever a customer brought in to be fixed; they employed local young people, and gave them an opportunity to learn to do something more than ring up products and take payments. And so, after a few shaky years, BoOhlssons was almost as busy as it had been before… albeit for very different reasons! (Nowadays it even tries to claim responsibility for having influenced Emporia:Evolved in Malmö, though no one outside of their PR department believes a word of it.)
If you’re outside of the Metro Zone and have a thing that needs fixing, Bo’s is your best bet; not coincidentally, it’s also a focal stop on a number of bus and light-rail routes, so getting there shouldn’t be too hard. We advise contacting them before you travel, however: they’ve often got the parts on file for even the most obscure technologies ever sold in Sweden, and you can save yourself a long trip by having them send it out to you on the local delivery networks.