Spar wars

Last week, on Parnell Street in Dublin, passersby could watch a Londis transform into a Spar. New signage was being erected on Joe Flynn's shop at the junction with Gardiner Street, but the old Londis logo temporarily coexisted with it. After 14 years working with Londis, Flynn was making the jump.

It would seem like a good time to do so. Three months ago Spar Ireland's owner, BWG, sold an 80 per cent stake to Spar South Africa, eliminating debt it had amassed during a previous management buyout and retained during a rough recession. (BWG also owns Mace, Xpress Stop and XL.) "Our balance sheet was highly leveraged," says Leo Crawford, chief executive of BWG, chairman of Spar International and co-owner of the remaining 20 per cent. "That debt is now gone." This week BWG announced a €100 million investment and a plan for 50 new stores over the next five years.

Spar was launched in 1932 by a Dutch shopkeeper, Adriaan Van Well, as Despar. This, Crawford says, is an acronym for Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig, which means All Benefit from Joint Co-operation. The first Irish Spar store was opened more than 50 years ago by the Ralph family (who are still involved in retail). Since then Spar and other "symbol" brands, such as Centra and Londis, have been taking over our high streets. There are now 420 Spar-branded stores in Ireland – 421 if you include the one that appears on Fair City as a result of a product-placement deal done in 2011.

Most of these are independent stores that have partnered with wholesalers from which they have committed to buy most of their produce. Joe Flynn has been in his store all night, watching the Spar-managed transition. “I’d have gone with them a few years ago if I saw what they would do to my store . . . A 17-inch floor-space increase? I wouldn’t have seen that.”

Ironically, in his time operating, Flynn has seen off two Spars that opened on the road, “but BWG were willing to support me even though all that happened. They didn’t hold any grudges.”

Advantages

His shop’s transformation is financed by BWG, and this is just one of the advantages of affiliation. Other benefits include the Spar group’s advertising budget, a simplified ordering system (this comes with purchasing most of your produce from one place) and the advanced retail science that comes with scale. “We know how to lay out a shop to entice customers to buy,” says Crawford.

BWG also give plenty of advice and oversight via its local “retail operations advisers”, as another Spar operator tells me. “Every few weeks he comes, and we walk the shop together and talk about what’s new in the market,” says Gus O’Hara, a veteran retailer. “He might also say, ‘You know any independents nearby that might be interested in putting up the Spar brand?’ ” He laughs. “I’ll say, ‘Yes, but not too nearby.’”

O’Hara is a self-confessed Spar loyalist who will walk by other shops to get to a Spar. Back in the 1980s, when the H Williams retailing chain went under, he, along with several other managers, were taken up by Spar and given businesses to run. “We were men of straw, and we didn’t have a bob, and they offered us franchises. They owned the buildings and we owned the businesses inside.”

His first store was in Raheny. He subsequently moved on to two Spar Stores in Clontarf, which he owns outright. (This is the more typical model for Spar stores.) They’re both recipients of Spar’s Five Star Award for “excellence in retail”. “We’re very snobbish about it,” he jokes.

The support and streamlined structures offered to symbol-shop owners mean that totally independent operators are a dying breed. Well, so says Tom Morris, owner of the Dalkey News newsagent, in south Co Dublin. “You go to any streetscape now and it’s very rare you see a local, individual retailer,” he says. “It’s just not going to happen any more.”

He talks about the advantages the symbol stores have when it comes to funding, group buying and brand recognition. “They can basically sit next door and make losses for one or two or three years, until you decide you have to move away.”

So why does he stay independent? “I don’t like going by someone else’s rulebook,” he says. “I wanted a bit of individuality. I can run my business the way I believe it should be done. And I love the cut and thrust of running a business by myself . . . Most of the Spars and Centras and Londises, they’re just clones.”

Paul Keogh, author of the Department of the Environment's Retail Design Manual, is unimpressed by "yellow-pack shop fronts". "I was standing to pay for a roll in a Spar when I got the text," he says, referring to the message The Irish Times sent to ask for an interview. "And I was thinking about how depressing a lot of these shops can be."

On the other hand, as a long-time critic of the way the large multiples move to the edges of towns, he also appreciates the way the symbol shops bring life back to their centres.

Eddie Shanahan, the retail consultant, says service in the symbol stores "is not polished in the way traditional local shops would be polished. With a lot of the Spars you get much the same product range . . . Lots of part-time staff and a quick turnover in staff, not people you get to know."

He believes people are beginning to miss the individuality of independent stores. "The prevailing number of shops nominated for the Irish Times Best Shops competition" – which Shanahan judged – "were independents," he says.

Family business

Shane Cantillon, who owns 10 Spar shops in Cork, says that the symbol groups have overseen a huge rise in standards and that there’s a benefit for customers in knowing “what to expect from a Spar shop whether it’s in Cork or Dublin”. And he rejects the idea that such stores don’t have a personal touch. “This is a family business. My dad and my brother still work with me every day. If I go out on the shop floor I’ll know the customer’s name, the daughter’s name in the pram, the grandmother. We have the group buying power of 400 Spar shops . . . but I wouldn’t like to think we are all the same.”

My local shopkeeper, Charlie Treacy, has been running his C&T supermarket, in Marino, his own way since the early 1990s. C&T is in a row of well-supported, independent shops on Philipsburgh Avenue. Treacy has been tempted by the security and simplicity of being part of a symbol group in the past, but ultimately he prefers his independence. "Look," he says, the symbol groups "are very helpful. They tell you how to run your business, how to lay out the shop."

What about your own layout? He laughs. “There’s no rhyme or reason to our layout. It developed as we went along. I have total control over how I do things. I can buy from whoever I want. So what I run in Marino is unique.”

Of course, seasoned Spar shopkeepers feel the same way. “I would like to think that because of my longevity with my shops that my own input has value,” says Gus O’Hara, but he also says that students from the nearby school “would say, ‘I’m going to Spar,’ not, ‘I’m going to Gus O’Hara’s.’ They don’t necessarily know it’s Gus O’Hara’s.”

Does he wish they did? He laughs. “Ah, that’s only personal pride.”