A Small Town With Big Dreams to Grow the Future

I arrived at Luleå, Sweden on Sunday, May 28th. It was an hour cab to a small town called Piteå. Anyone who knows me, they know that I  rather be dinning at a Michelin rated restaurant or taking a cycling class than head to a place that is cold, smaller metropolitan, and the nightlife was a little less colorful than Los Angeles. None the less, I was completely in awe by the endless day and colorful skies. The town is peaceful and comforting; you could take a walk in the brisk walk and catch a 11pm sunset.

Piteå has an exciting mixture of historic standards and  future growth  at the same time. Old Nordic culture and approach keeps the past alive. Cold air and  open landscape allows the Piteå take on exciting leap into the IT expansion and giving new ‘Start Ups’ a cool advantage.

#Endless Skies

Keeping the Rich History Alive 

The town pride itself on rich history and customs. This is evident when the class was taken to a local tannery and has been around for almost 100 years. The Bōle Tannery is one of the few tanneries who uses spruce bark and water to tan hide into leather.  The spruce and water mixture has been around for 100 years, only spruce and water is added as needed. What makes the tannery stand out is the workmanship; bags and leather goods cannot be made from flawed materials or have any defects. Bole marks each bag they sell so they may put some personality to the bag; in a way makes Bōle accountable for the work. Anders Sandlund and his staff have no issues with meeting the rigorous standards.

Bōle Showroom

Growing into the Future

The cool weather and landscape allows IT company to chill servers in an eco friendly way, this is evident when the #ChapmanScandinavia2017 was given a presentation and tour of Fortlax in Piteå. A data center that was formed in 2004 and provide data solutions with world-class securities. Fortlax was started by Anders Berglund, a Piteå native, his goal is to provide the world a data center at the forefront technology above all other companies. Now Fortlax provides services to more than 400 Scandinavian companies and currently expanding to a third module for growth.

Fellow EMBA Students.

This was only the first day excursion into the Swedish culture, traditions, and international growth of their businesses.  It is apparent the Norrbotten County have goals to put their name on the World’s map and there is no stopping this goal.

More for information on other companies visits and my adventures during my #ChapmanScandinavian2017 Trip, please check out my Instagram @The_Nguyen_Perspective.

#TheAdventuresOfETN #NguyenTravels #ChapmanEMBA2018