Our
founder, Adolf Viktor Olsson was born on the family's farm outside of Lysekil in
Bohuslän in Sweden in October, 1897. He was the youngest of 14 children, and
the family was deeply involved with all aspects of the local food business;
farming, fishing, packing, etc. Adolf Olsson emigrated to America in 1926 and
settled in Brooklyn, New York with his wife, Ragnhild. He soon began importing Swedish
Foodstuffs from his brothers, and sold them door-to-door. The many
native-born Scandinavian immigrants who were then living in New York City were a
ready market for the foods they remembered from home. Old invoices in our
archives from the 1920's and 30's list some of the foods that were popular among
the immigrants back then; fiskebullar, aptitbitar, sill, ansjovis and
knäckebröd.
Adolf Olsson worked hard during the depression years, and gradually the business grew. Stores began stocking the products Adolf Olsson was importing, first in New York and then in other cities where Scandinavians settled; places like Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles and Worcester. Wagon jobbers, today known as specialty food distributors, began handling his wares. It is a source of great pride for us that A. V. Olsson Trading Co. still does business with some of the accounts that Adolf Olsson started with in the 1930's; companies like the Peterson Company in Seattle, Westergaard and Haram Christensen in New York, Lascco in Los Angeles and Olficso in Minneapolis. Although all these businesses have evolved in many different ways over the past sixty years, as has A. V. Olsson Trading Co., it is significant that our ties to each other have stood the test of time.
A. V. Olsson Trading Co. is a family business owned and run by the Olsson family. Adolf's son, Lennart joined his father in the business in 1954, and then his son, Kenneth, joined his father and grandfather in 1979. In this regard, A. V. Olsson Trading Co. is not a Swedish business per se. However, a significant share of our business is with Swedish products; 40 percent of our turnover in fiscal 1997 came from goods that were imported directly from Sweden. Equally important, our relationships with some of the Swedish firms we represent here in the U.S. go back for many, many years.