ELKO Grupa is a Latvian-based company founded in 1993 and dealing with the distribution of information technology products in the countries of Central Asia and Europe. Among the services rendered to its customers, are consulting and provision with computers and electronic products. The headquarters of the company is in Riga, Latvia, and it also has sales offices in 12 countries, among them Russia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Sweden, Slovakia, Poland and some others. Having become the biggest company in Latvia in 2005, ELKO Group in 2007 bypassed the level of year turnover of 1 billion US dollars. Today the company operates in 30 countries.
ELKO Group is one of the largest international distributors of home appliances, IT products, and solutions, which was founded in Riga, Latvia, in 1993.
In the early days of the business, the four founding friends of ELKO bought computer components, assembled PCs from them, and sold them. However, the company managed to make a confident statement about itself, and soon the business entered neighboring Lithuania and Estonia.
Today ELKO Group holding its headquarters in Riga has sales offices in 11 countries, cooperates with more than 500 world-leading manufacturers of IT industry and household appliances, and the total number of the company’s personnel is more than a thousand people. ELKO Group is one of the five largest distributors of Seagate, Sony, and Western Digital drives in Europe, as well as one of the five largest distributors of Intel products and Sony monitors in Eastern Europe.
Managing the flow of products through three international logistics hubs, the ELKO company provides supplies and offers solutions to more than 10 thousand customers, including retailers, local computer manufacturers, system integrators, and enterprises of various industries.
The original ELKO logo, designed in 1993, stayed with the company for the first ten years of its history. It was a bright blue stylized wordmark, set in the uppercase of an extra-bold geometric sans-serif typeface, with the elongated diagonal bar of the “K”. And the negative space of the “O” set in solid blue and decorated by three thin white diagonal strokes. This emblem became a basis for the future redesign.
At first, the ELKO logo was very plain and uncomplicated. It was the name of the company written in white block letters on a sky blue rectangle. The logo was used on documentation and technical materials, office premises and communications.
In May 1917, a new logo was introduced. At first glance, the ELKO logo is very simple and straightforward. It still consists of the company’s name written in block letters and in strict lead grey color. The letters of the word have the features of the commercial font Aliment Light. Nevertheless, there is a graphical sign integrated into the wordmark. The sign is made extremely simple: the arm and the leg of the letter “K” are painted in sky blue color.
It may look that this is done merely to give the wordmark a more vivid look, but the company’s officials put special meaning into this sign. The thing is that it resembles an open door seen from above. The firm’s philosophy links it to a door open for the expertise of ELKO’s partners that helps to comprehend the client’s needs. It is in this synergy of the producers and customers from which emerges the ideas for the diversity of products and services.