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Type | Private |
---|---|
Industry | Retail |
Founded | 1932 |
Headquarters | , Netherlands |
Number of locations | 13,500 (worldwide) |
Area served | Worldwide (48 countries as of 2019) |
Products | Grocers' shops, convenience shops, discount shops, hypermarkets and more |
Revenue | €37.1 billion (2019) |
Number of employees | 370,000 |
Website | www |
SPAR, originally DESPAR, styled as DE SPAR, [1] is a Dutch multinational that provides branding, supplies and support services for independently owned and operated food retail stores. [2] It was founded in the Netherlands in 1932, [3] by Adriaan van Well, and now consists of more than 13,500 stores in 48 countries. The company's name is an acronym of the slogan "Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig", which was used by van Well to describe the brand and translates as "All Benefit from Joint Co-operation Regularly". [4]
Its headquarters are located in Amsterdam. The company operates a partnership programme and has a presence in most European countries, as well as many others throughout Asia, Africa and Oceania.
In fiscal year 2019, SPAR achieved €37.1 billion in global sales, which represented a 4.35 percent increase over 2018. [5]
The name was originally DESPAR, an acronym of the Dutch phrase Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig [note 1] (English: "through united co-operation everyone regularly profits"). The acronym was chosen to resonate with the verb sparen , which (related to English spare ) means "save [money]" in Dutch and some other languages, among them German [6] and Scandinavian languages (with variants such as spara or spare). "Spar" is Dutch for "spruce tree", after which the logo was chosen. As the organisation expanded across Europe, the name was abbreviated by dropping the DE prefix. [4] [7]
There are some international naming variants:
Spar was founded in 1932, in the South Holland town of Zegwaart (now part of Zoetermeer). In 1953, an International Spar office opened in Amsterdam to control and further develop the organisation throughout Europe and other continents. Many Spar shops are in Europe, but they can also be found in a number of countries outside of Europe, such as Australia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Cameroon, China, India. [18] Spar opened in Vanuatu on 1 December 2009, ending Au Bon Marché's grocery monopoly. [19]
A Spar shop may be owned independently, by a franchisee, or be part of a chain, depending on the model applied in any given country. The owners of the parent company vary from country to country and may include the shop owners themselves. The name and the current logo was most recently revised in 1968 by Raymond Loewy and has since remained unchanged. [20]
In the United Kingdom Spar, founded in 1959, may be a supermarket or a convenience shop, and is more common in Northern Ireland than Great Britain. In 1997, Spar was introduced to most United Kingdom military bases by the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (Naafi), where it sells a variety of civilian and military products. [21] In Ireland the Spar brand is known for neighbourhood shops and also the subformat Eurospar acting as mini-supermarkets.[ citation needed ]
Since 1996, the company has been a major sponsor of the European Athletic Association and its events. [22]
The Dutch Spar is a member of Superunie, an inventory purchasing organisation for a number of otherwise unaffiliated supermarket brands.[ citation needed ]
In 1988, SPAR South Africa became a wholly owned subsidiary of Tiger Brands, a holding company with a large diversified portfolio, however it was unbundled and listed as a separate company in 2004. [23] In July 2014, Spar Group South Africa opened its first supermarket in Angola but no expansion of the brand is planned for this market. In August 2014, the group acquired 80% of the BWG Group, which had outlets in Ireland and southern Britain. [24]
In 2015, Ahold acquired all 35 hypermarkets and 14 supermarkets from Spar Czechia for more than 5.2 billion Czech koruna. [25] and converted them into Albert super- and hypermarkets, however it had to divest itself of some shops in order not to have a monopoly.[ citation needed ]
The first SPAR shop in Oman was inaugurated in January 2015, in Muscat.[ citation needed ] Spar Oman has plans to open more shops over time as part of its expansion plans in Oman.[ citation needed ] Spar opened its first store in Qatar in 2017, with the second store opening in 2018. A further two stores are planned for 2018. [26]
SPAR opened in Saudi Arabia in 2017, sublicensed to Al-Sadhan Group [27] opening the first stores in Riyadh.
In 2017, Ceylon Biscuits Limited in Sri Lanka acquired a license to operate Spar brand in Sri Lanka as Spar Lanka. This is a joint venture of Ceylon Biscuits Limited and SPAR Group Ltd, South Africa. [28] They opened the first store in Thalawathugoda, Colombo. The plan is to open 50 outlets in the country by 2023. [29]
In 2020, it was more than 13,500 SPAR stores in 48 countries. [30]
In most, but not all countries, SPAR operates shops of different types and sub-brands: SPAR Express, SPAR Neighbourhood, EuroSPAR and InterSPAR. [31]
The EuroSPAR name is used in Europe and SuperSPAR in South Africa. These are mid-sized supermarkets. They are designed to fit in a niche between convenience shops and traditional supermarkets. [32]
These are hypermarkets and compete directly against major international chains such as Real, Carrefour, and Tesco. [33] [34]
KwikSPAR (only found in South Africa) are a smaller quick stop shop for convenience. They are larger than the conventional SPAR Express but smaller than the normal SPAR. These stores tend to have extended trading hours, some even being 24-hour convenience stores.
This is the smallest type of shop. They are designed for small sites and filling station forecourts, airports and train stations. [35]
There was a drive-through SPAR on the Cliftonville Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This has now been converted to a Centra shop, and retained the drive-through for a while afterhand, but now no longer has one. [36]
The Austrian Spar Group has around 50 supermarkets branded SPAR Gourmet, mainly in and around Vienna. They are smaller supermarkets that specialize in foods, with a reduced range of other household goods. They originate from the acquisition of retail units from the Julius Meinl coffee and tea chain in 2000. [37] [38] [39]
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine which began on February 24, many international, particularly Western, companies pulled out of Russia. Unlike most of its Western competitors, Spar has been slow to announce any disinvestments or scaling back of its operations in Russia, drawing criticism. Ukrainian government officials called for a global boycott of the company. [41] [42]
A convenience store, convenience shop, corner store or corner shop is a small retail business that stocks a range of everyday items such as coffee, groceries, snack foods, confectionery, soft drinks, ice creams, tobacco products, lottery tickets, over-the-counter drugs, toiletries, newspapers and magazines. In some jurisdictions, convenience stores are licensed to sell alcoholic drinks, although many jurisdictions limit such beverages to those with relatively low alcohol content, like beer and wine. The stores may also offer money order and wire transfer services, along with the use of a fax machine or photocopier for a small per-copy cost. Some also sell tickets or recharge smart cards, e.g. OPUS cards in Montreal. They differ from general stores and village shops in that they are not in a rural location and are used as a convenient supplement to larger stores.
Carrefour is a French multinational retail and wholesaling corporation headquartered in Massy, France. The eighth-largest retailer in the world by revenue, it operates a chain of hypermarkets, groceries stores and convenience stores, which as of December 2021, comprises its 13,894 stores in over 30 countries.
A hypermarket is a big-box store combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full grocery lines and general merchandise. In theory, hypermarkets allow customers to satisfy all their routine shopping needs in one trip. The term hypermarket was coined in 1968 by French trade expert Jacques Pictet.
Lotus's is a retail chain in Thailand founded and operated by Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group, with operations in Malaysia following the acquisition of Tesco Malaysia in 2020.
Auchan is a French multinational retail group headquartered in Croix, France. It was founded in 1961 by Gérard Mulliez and is owned by the Mulliez family, who has 95% stake in the company. With 354,851 employees, of which 261,000 have 5% stake in the company, it is the 35th largest employer in the world.
ÆON Co., Ltd., commonly written AEON Co., Ltd., is a Japanese multinational holding company of ÆON Group. It has its headquarters in Mihama-ku, Chiba, Chiba Prefecture.
Casino Group or Casino Guichard-Perrachon is a French mass-market retail group. It was founded on 2 August 1898 by Geoffroy Guichard under the corporate name Guichard-Perrachon & Co.
In the Republic of Ireland, the retail sector provides one of the largest sources of employment in the economy, representing over 12% of the workforce. As of 2017, approximately 40,000 wholesale and retail businesses employed almost 280,000 people in Ireland, with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment reporting that 90% of these businesses were Irish-owned.
Big C, is a grocery and general merchandising retailer headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand. Big C is as of 2016 Thailand's second-largest hypermarket operator after Lotus's. It has operations in four countries, namely Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
Veropoulos was a large retail group based in Greece until 2016. It held the SPAR retail franchise for Greece, with the franchise still present in the country after Spar's cooperation agreement with the Asteras Group. As a result of bankruptcy, Veropoulos was bought in 2016 by the Metro Group, which re-branded the stores soon after as My Market stores. In Crete, Veropoulos operated stores under the name of Chalkiadakis. Outside Greece, Veropoulos operated supermarkets in the Republic of North Macedonia as Vero, and in Serbia as SuperVero. The company was established in 1973, when the first Veropoulos supermarket opened in Athens. As of 2012, the company owned 185 stores in Greece, 10 stores in the Republic of North Macedonia and six hypermarkets in Serbia. In Greece, Veropoulos was the fourth-biggest supermarket chain in terms of market share. The firm belonged to the Veropoulos family who are also the founders of the company.
Presto Foodmarkets was a chain of supermarkets and convenience stores in Great Britain, which first appeared in the early 1960s. While the fate of most of the chain's stores was conversion to Safeway, the final stores still trading as Presto were either closed or sold in 1998.
Market Place in Hong Kong, Cold Storage Fresh in Singapore, Mercató in Malaysia and The Marketplace in the Philippines is a high-end supermarket chain owned by DFI Retail Group. The chain also has a joint venture in mainland China with Beijing Hualian Group called BHG Market Place and formerly ran stores in Taiwan until they were sold to Carrefour.
Lianhua Supermarket Holdings Co., Ltd. is a Chinese supermarket company that is a subsidiary of the Bailian Group. The company has offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Koninklijke Ahold Delhaize N.V., commonly known as Ahold Delhaize, is a Dutch multinational retail and wholesaling company. Its name comes from a merger between Ahold (Dutch) and Delhaize Group (Belgian), the two predecessor companies that merged to form the present-day Ahold Delhaize. Its business format includes supermarkets, convenience stores, hypermarkets, online grocery, online non-food, drugstores, and liquor stores. Its 21 local brands employ 375,000 people at 6,500 stores in 11 countries, predominantly the Netherlands and Belgium.
Beijing Jingkelong Supermarket Chain Company Limited or Jingkelong is a Chinese supermarket chain headquartered in Chaoyang District, Beijing.
SM Retail Inc. is a private retail holding company based in Pasay, Metro Manila, Philippines. It is a subsidiary of the conglomerate SM Investments Corporation. SM Retail has been a member of the International Association of department stores since 2009.
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(help)Naafi has chosen Spar as its retail partner to convert its 200 UK shops into a "world class operation for the next millennium". The contract, worth nearly £500 million over the next five years, was awarded after extensive trials with Costcutter and Londis.[ dead link ]