Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 company ELFA, which distributes electronics

Electronics

Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...

 components, instruments, tools, and books to business and private customers, was founded in 1945 by Arne Lydmar and Nils "Nisse" Jensen. As of 2006 it had 450 employees, and a turnaround of roughly SEK

Swedish krona

The krona has been the currency of Sweden since 1873. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it, but especially in the past, it sometimes preceded the value...

 845 million. ELFA is headquartered in Järfälla

Järfälla Municipality

Järfälla Municipality is a municipality in Stockholm County in east central Sweden, and is considered a suburb of Stockholm. Its seat is located in Jakobsberg....

, outside Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

. In 2006 the company was sold to Swedish private equity fund

Private equity fund

A private equity fund is a collective investment scheme used for making investments in various equity securities according to one of the investment strategies associated with private equity....

 Industri Kapital by the Jensen family. In May 2007 ELFA bought the Estonian-based Tevalo group. In 2008 it was bought by the Swiss company Dätwyler.

Since 1945, ELFA has published its regionally well-known catalog which currently contains listings of more than 65,000 products, and is printed in 134,000 copies (2006). The printed catalog is supplemented by a website with online ordering and datasheet

Datasheet

thumb|A floppy disk controller datasheet.A datasheet, data sheet, or spec sheet is a document summarizing the performance and other technical characteristics of a product, machine, component , material, a subsystem or software in sufficient detail to be used by a design engineer to integrate the...

 viewing/downloading. Many of the private customers are electronics hobbyists, who are also offered do-it-yourself electronics kits of various types. Daughter companies of ELFA are located in Finland

Finland

Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

, Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, and Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. After the acquisition of Tevalo also in Estonia

Estonia

Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

, Latvia

Latvia

Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

, and Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

. A network of electronics retailers represent the company in several European countries.