Kärkkäinen (formerly ''J. Kärkkäinen'') is a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic app ...

chain in

Ylivieska Ylivieska () is a town and municipality of Northern Ostrobothnia region, Finland. It has a population of (), and it serves as the administrative centre for Kalajokilaakso and Pyhäjokilaakso, an area with a population of about 90,000 inhabitant ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. It was established in 1988. In 2016, it was the fourth largest

discount store A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...

chain in Finland after

Tokmanni Tokmanni Group Oyj is a Finnish retail chain, which is also the largest discount store chain in Finland in terms of net sales in 2019. Tokmanni is Finland's only nationwide discount store chain, and at the end of 2019 it had almost 200 stores aroun ...

, HalpaHalli and Motonet. In addition to Ylivieska, the company has also stores in

Oulu Oulu ( , ; sv, Uleåborg ) is a city, municipality and a seaside resort of about 210,000 inhabitants in the region of North Ostrobothnia, Finland. It is the most populous city in northern Finland and the fifth most populous in the country after: ...

, Ii,

Lahti Lahti (; sv, Lahtis) is a city and municipality in Finland. It is the capital of the region of Päijänne Tavastia (Päijät-Häme) and its growing region is one of the main economic hubs of Finland. Lahti is situated on a bay at the southern e ...

and

Jyväskylä Jyväskylä () is a city and municipality in Finland in the western part of the Finnish Lakeland. It is located about 150 km north-east from Tampere, the third largest city in Finland; and about 270 km north from Helsinki, the capital of ...

, and it also own an

online store Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce which allows consumers to directly buy goods or services from a seller over the Internet using a web browser or a mobile app. Consumers find a product of interest by visiting the website of the r ...

. The company's founder and CEO is . In 2010, Kärkkäinen applied for corporate restructuring, because the company had a total of more than EUR 37 million in restructuring debt. The district court drew up a ten-year repayment program for the company. The corporate restructuring program ended in August 2020. In a brand valuation survey conducted by ''

Markkinointi & Mainonta ''Markkinointi & Mainonta'', abbreviated as ''M&M'', (meaning ''Marketing and Advertising'' in English) was a Finnish language marketing magazine. The magazine was started in 1994 by a group, including Kim Weckström, a Finnish entrepreneur. Its t ...

'' in 2018, Kärkkäinen was the least valued of the seven discount store brands. This is widely thought to be due to the

controversy Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin ''controversia'', as a composite of ''controversus'' – "turned in an opposite d ...

surrounding the company and its CEO, which stemmed from

anti-Semitic Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

articles in the company’s free newspaper distribution, including in ''

Magneettimedia ''Magneettimedia'' is a Finnish free and online newspaper. It was initially published by retail chain J. Kärkkäinen but currently it is published by Pohjoinen perinne, a society linked with the Finnish Resistance Movement.Leppävuori, AnnaKohut ...

''. The connections of the free newspaper distribution to the

neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...

organization

Finnish Resistance Movement The Nordic Resistance Movement; Norwegian: nb, Nordiske motstandsbevegelsen, NMB; nn, Nordiske motstandsrørsla NMR; fi, Pohjoismainen Vastarintaliike, PVL; is, Norræna mótstöðuhreyfingin, NMH; da, Den nordiske modstandsbevægelse, ...

have also been detrimental to the company's reputation. Largely due to the uproar, many companies do not sell their products in Kärkkäinen's stores; Finlayson,

Fiskars Fiskars Group (also known as Fiskars Oyj Abp or Fiskars Corporation, and until 1998 as Fiskars Oy Ab) is a Finnish group company. The company has its roots in the village of Fiskars (in the town of Raseborg, about west of Helsinki), where it was ...

and Otava, among others, have terminated the cooperation. In 2021, Juha Kärkkäinen urged his employees in an internal email not to take the coronavirus vaccine. The message was accompanied by a link to MV-media's website.

Sources

References

External links

* Companies of Finland Department stores of Finland Discount stores of Finland {{Finland-company-stub