A silent cartel protecting Sweden’s sacred cows?
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Don’t know about you, but when I peer into other people’s baskets in Systembolaget, most of them aren’t buying fancy wines. Kopparbergs cider, yes. Sofiero beer, check. Mauro wine, by the carton. The Swedish booze monopoly might boast of its wonderful selection, but relatively few of those shopping there take advantage of this.
The big threat, then, to Systembolaget’s continued existence, is the potential for people to get already cheap booze even more cheaply. Smuggling is one worry for monopoly defenders; another is people buying their six-month supply of booze in Denmark, Germany or Estonia and ignoring Systembolaget altogether.
On the scale of threats to Systembolaget, Aussie vintner Mark Majzner must rank pretty low. Majzner is not funneling cheap booze over the border; his company, Antipodes Premium Wines, simply sells interesting wines otherwise not available in Sweden. He’s not aiming at the street drinker or the schoolkid – he’s targeting that endangered species: the Swedish bon viveur.
Why, then, has he been treated so unprofessionally by Kooperativ Förbundet, one of Sweden’s largest supermarket operators? Majzner explains the whole episode in The Local’s opinion section, but to give the short version: KF, owner of Coop, had signed a deal with him that would allow people to order his wine via their website. After months of preparations by Antipodes Premium Wines, the service was days from going live when KF pulled the plug. He says they did so unilaterally and basically with no more detailed explanation than ‘the members wouldn’t wear it.’
Majzner, rightly, smells a rat. The stench got stronger when Posten also refused to continue delivering his wine, despite having done so for months.
The extraordinary question is, was a cartel of self-interested organizations within Sweden’s ‘Folkhem’ working to protect Systembolaget – one of its own? That’s the question being asked by the Financial Times. Their Stockholm correspondent David Ibison points out:
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It is easy to forget the depth and breadth of Sweden’s leftwing heritage, but the fact remains that it has been ruled for most of the past 70 years by the Social Democrats, who set up most of the state-run monopolies. The country’s right-leaning government is a rare exception to the rule.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am
The under-handed way in which Mark Majzner has been treated is a typical situation wheerby a group of seemingly separate associations act in unison to block a business or even alternative opinion. We have lived in Sweden for ten years now operating our very small business and have seen this type of behaviour on numerous occasions. One needs to understand that Swden has many sacred cows and that these sacred cows are indoctrinated so deep into all Swedes that they have no clue that it is a very skilful mind-program that tends to provide them with all their so-called liberal opinions. If you want to do something a littel different in Sweden you take a big chance, the sacred cows have guards and soldiers to protect them…My advice is never to underestimate the power of 70 years of social, political and cultural steering.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:39 am
I have a one-word explanation for what motivates monopolies to do what they do:
GREED!
February 21st, 2009 at 5:10 pm
its swedens version of opec.
March 6th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Sweden’s state monopolies are a farce. Systemet is a prime example: overpriced, restricted opening hours, with a dreadfully limited stock range. Outside major population centres, its range is even worse and it can take up to ten days for specific orders to reach its ombuds. Why on earth can’t you simply pop down to the supermarket to buy a bottle of wine on a Saturday afternoon (or, heaven forbid, a Sunday!!!) – for example, if an unexpected guest arrives? What is the threat in that? Lagom gone mad. In reality, it’s another facet of Sweden’s Stasi-like, population control – a number from birth to death and everything in between. God knows what Swedes must think when they visit other countries. Faced with such freedom of choice, and independent, individual decision making, do they have breakdowns? Can they cope when given such self-responsibility? And…. all without the need for a number! That Sweden should be in line for the (albeit shared) presidency of the EU is outrageous nonsense. It has consistently breached EU free market policies, requiring special exemptions on an ongoing and, seemingly, never-ending basis. It is time it was coerced by its EU neighbours, including the EU Court and Parliament, into accepting its responsibilities under EU law. Sweden’s state monopolies should simply be scrapped.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Maybe depends where you live as to what people are buying and also what time of day / day of week you visit “System”? I often see people buying expensive wines there.
Someone from Malmö tells me that the System there is full of Danes who come over to get the expensive/quality wines because they are cheaper than in Denmark. Netto in Copenhagen on the other hand is full of Swedes filling up their Volvos with Carlsberg