In 1999, Spel & Sånt is born in a 52m2 store at Hantverkaregatan 3 in Norrtälje.

With orange walls, shelves made from bent rain gutters and start-up funding in the form of Peter's student grant, as he was still in upper secondary school when Spel & Sånt started. Two anecdotes: it took about 2 years before we could afford to buy our first brand-new video games, so during the first years we only sold second-hand. How this worked out we still don't really understand, but to open our store we needed a lease with the property owner Robert Svensson, which Peter managed to get despite having no income and 1.5 years left of upper secondary school. Thank you Robert, without your faith in us our story would have ended before it began.

The Bomb is born

The Bomb's exact date of birth has sadly been lost to time, but 2002 was the first time he made his debut in the Spel & Sånt logo, and ever since he has been a natural part of our brand. But the Bomb is actually older than that: we were getting special price tags for sale items that would be called "prisbomb" (price bomb). When these were created together with the designer Jonas at the advertising agency which, funnily enough, was called Reklam & Sånt, the Bomb was born, but exactly when that was we sadly don't know. Today the Bomb adorns more than our logo; he can be found on our plastic bags, our truck, the tokens for our arcade and most recently as a soft and cuddly plushie.

Our webshop launches

Imagine that for 11 years we ran Spel & Sånt solely as a small physical store with all sales over the counter, but now it was time to go digital. In the first 4 months after launch we only received a total of 29 home delivery orders, and every now and then we made test purchases because we thought something wasn't working in the webshop, since weeks could sometimes pass between orders. Unfortunately nothing was broken in the webshop; we were just very unknown online. Slowly but surely one customer discovered us, and then another; a lot spread by word of mouth in the beginning until we started listing our products on prisjakt.nu, and then the pace of orders quickly increased. A fun anecdote is that it is still the same web agency that built our first webshop that develops it and our systems today: our neighbours, friends and IT partner West Art Communication.

Customers queue outside the store for a week ahead of the release of Diablo III.

A whole week before our late-night opening for Diablo III, four customers started camping outside our store. They became not only the first in Sweden but also the first in Europe to start queuing for the release of Diablo III, and this caught the attention of Blizzard, who sent gifts to our brave queuers sleeping in tents in our parking lot outside the store. It was a really fun week, both for us and the queuers; we did lots of fun things together, had breakfast, coffee breaks and barbecues in the evenings behind the store. Watch video

We win our first award, Store of the Year in Norrtälje!

Today we may have a whole bunch of wins under our belt, but in 2012 we got our very first award, and we were so proud to become the very first winner ever when Norrtälje established the Store of the Year award. Sadly we no longer remember the motivation or much about the gala evening itself when we received the award, because when you win for the first time you celebrate properly into the small hours. Watch video

Our first Prisjakt award

"Newcomer of the Year" 2012 was the year we finally connected our webshop to Prisjakt, and what an entrance it was! When it was time to vote for the year's winners, Prisjakt's customers liked us so much that we were crowned Newcomer of the Year. To quote one of our customer reviews that sums up the first year's reviews very well: "Candy and bubble wrap"; packing the goods well and including candy turned out to be a recipe for success for us. And Prisjakt's own motivation for the award reads: Norrtälje gamers' pride, with an owner who doesn't hide behind a web store. Fast deliveries that are also personal in the home town and a nice blog give the store a really cosy feeling that the big players lack. Of course Spel & Sånt had to be Newcomer of the Year! Watch video

The logo gets a makeover.

At the beginning of 2015 we were going to update the design of our webshop and brought in an illustrator with a long and impressive track record, who was very expensive for us at the time. But a few months later it was clear that the design wasn't quite what we had in mind, and it was never used on our website, except for one thing, which is a bit funny because that's not what we hired him for: redrawing our logo. He did it anyway and we thought it turned out really nice, but extremely expensive considering it was the only thing we used out of everything the illustrator drew for us.

When we move to the 750m2 premises we have today.

After 18 years in small premises of 178m2 we started to feel it was time to stretch our legs a bit, so when the 750m2 premises across the street became available we went for it. Since it was so much bigger than the old one it felt quite spacious at first, but slowly but surely we grew into our new store. At first we were a bit worried about our ability to make such large premises, which had previously housed a big sports store, personal and cosy, but we think you'll agree that we succeeded. With this space, and perhaps above all the ceiling height, our creativity and imagination could finally run free and create what we had always dreamed of. This resulted in everything from our museum cabinets and Bowser's Castle fitting room to a Mario Pipe as a checkout counter. The idea is that you should always be able to discover something new you've never noticed before on every visit to the store. When we talk about the move to the new premises we must always mention all the help we got from friends and family, relatives and, last but not least, our loyal customers, who all lent a hand during the 3-month renovation. The last night before the opening was probably one of the most stressful of this period, but thanks to 20+ helpful Samaritans (you know who you are), the opening of the new store became the success it was! Watch video

We open our arcade Extraliv in the store.

In the spring we soft-open our arcade, located wall to wall with our regular store. It takes some time to get permits and to find all the arcade games and pinball machines we want from all corners of the world, not to mention the renovation of the premises themselves, which had been a pet shop for 30 years, and last but not least to set up our own currency system for all the games with our own custom-made tokens. Then we were done and were going to go all out with a proper opening, but then people started talking about a virus in Wuhan, and shortly after our arcade was limited to a maximum of 6 guests at a time in the entire premises, so it wasn't quite the start we had imagined. But we are still very happy to have an arcade today, which in itself is unusual in Sweden, and which is also open during the daytime and isn't located in a bar with alcohol, so families can really feel welcome here. The games have been swapped out many times since 2019, but today we have truly gathered all our favourite arcade games and pinball machines in one place!

Grand Slam at Prisjakt.nu when we win Store of the Year and three other categories.

After a few wins in the Game Store of the Year category, we finally win the biggest award, Store of the Year! And at the same time three other awards: Game/Film Store of the Year, Enthusiast Store of the Year and Customer Service of the Year. Never before had any winner taken home so many awards at once. A fun anecdote about this: Spel & Sånt's owner Peter Kauffmann and his wife were carrying a little secret: they were going to become parents. No one among the staff, relatives or friends knew yet, but when Prisjakt called to announce the win and schedule a photo shoot, it clashed with an ultrasound appointment, so Peter had to explain the clash and the photo shoot had to be rescheduled. – It has become a bit of a running inside joke: ”Who did you tell first that you were having a baby? Prisjakt found out first of all =). Watch video

Musikhjälpen auction on Tradera

Mama Mia! Our first charity auction, with a contribution from Bergsala's founder Owe Bergsten, in aid of Musikhjälpen ended in a smashing success and started a tradition we still continue today. Since then, every year at Christmas, we hold a charity auction in aid of Musikhjälpen together with Owe, where we provide the item and Owe the signature.

Vänligheten

One of our local regular customers, the master of horror John Ajvide Lindqvist, mentions Spel & Sånt in his acclaimed novel "Vänligheten". John is also extremely well known for several other novels and their film adaptations, such as "Let the Right One In", "Border" and "Handling the Undead". John lives locally in Roslagen and has for several years been one of our loyal regular customers. Peter still sometimes talks about how starstruck he and Borka were the first time they saw him come into the store; it was shortly after the film adaptation of "Let the Right One In" came out, and they had both recently seen it and fallen in love with it. Nowadays, though, they try to be a little cooler when he drops by. Another fun piece of celebrity trivia is that both Peter and Borka appear in Jean Banan's music video "Gamer", admittedly only for about 1.32 seconds, so don't blink or you'll easily miss them.

We win Store of the Year 2023, as well as the category award Store of the Year Games & Consoles 2023.

Prisjakt's motivation: Spel & Sånt has cast its spell over gaming Sweden! With outstanding expertise and superb service without the slightest glitch, the store is praised by its customers: “I have never experienced better range, treatment and knowledge anywhere else.” The gaming enthusiasts' paradise is clearly located in Norrtälje – Spel & Sånt, you are truly 1337! Watch video

Peter Kauffmann of Spel & Sånt receives the Norrtälje Key

Norrtälje Municipality's motivation: Peter has successfully run the game store Spel & Sånt in the town of Norrtälje for 25 years. Contrary to the trend of physical stores closing down, Peter Kauffmann has instead expanded and developed his business. He has previously been recognised for his service and unique store, and he is also a great ambassador for Norrtälje. He is therefore now awarded the Norrtälje Key. Read more on Norrtälje Municipality's website