Already during my previous visits to this village, I’ve noticed this old store. Judging by some of the color choices still visible, it has belonged to a chain called Siwa. An old Google Maps picture from 2009 confirmed this.
When I started searching for the store’s closing date, I ran into a surprising reason as to why this location is abandoned – it’s because of the authorities.
The storage building at the back.
Back in 2017 a company called Kesko bought the company running the chain of Siwa stores. The competition authorities ordered it to close or sell 60 of the locations so, that its market share didn’t grow too big. This one was one of them, because the village only had one other store left, a K-market run by Kesko.
Eventually Kesko only managed to sell 10 of the stores, and the demand of the authorities was dropped because the chain owning the Siwas would have gone bankrupt anyway. Yet the remainint 50 were closed and this one was one of them.
Since then vandals have found it and started breaking windows. I hope to find a point of entry in the coming years.