Poppy Logo. FB house promo. Sign Up for News Updates. Sign up. Not convinced? Staff even had a uniform of white aprons. By this time each store had six departments: dairy, bacon and hams, poultry and game, cooked meats and fresh meats. Home delivery featured in every store as there were fewer cars in those days.
Sites were carefully chosen, with a central position in a parade selected in preference to a corner shop. This allowed a larger display of products, which could be kept cooler in summer, which was important as there was no refrigeration.
By the time John James Sainsbury died in , there were shops. He was replaced by his eldest son, John Benjamin Sainsbury, who had gone into partnership with his father in The company acquired the Midlands-based Thoroughgood chain in Turnover fell to half the pre-war level.
Food was rationed, and one particular store in East Grinstead was so badly damaged on Friday 9 July that it had to move to the local Church as a temporary replacement while a new one was built.
This store was not completed until The first self-service branch opened in Croydon in It expanded more cautiously than Tesco, shunning acquisitions, and it never offered trading stamps. Until the company went public on 12 July , as J Sainsbury plc, the company was wholly owned by the Sainsbury family.
It was at the time the largest ever flotation on theLondon Stock Exchange; the company rewarded the smaller bids for shares in order to create as many shareholders as possible. A million shares were set aside for staff, which led to many staff members buying shares that shot up in value. The company benefited, too, from a consistency of management stemming from family ownership and control.
The last counter service branch closed inPeckham in The first SavaCentre store was opened inWashington, Tyne and Wear, in ; nearly half the space, amounting to some 35, sq ft 3, m 2 , was devoted to textiles, electrical goods and hardware.
This is in direct contrast to rival firms Tesco and Asda, which have been rapidly expanding their Tesco Extra and Asda Wal-Mart Supercentre hypermarket formats in recent years. The plan was to open a DIY store with a supermarket-style layout. Homebase was tripled in size in with the acquisition of the rival Texas Homecare from the Ladbroke Group plc. There was, however, diversification outside the UK.
The success of the Merry Hill store, combined with the onset of the recession resulted in a fall in trade at the nearby store in Halesowen, which closed in Between December and December the company opened seven stores. Two others at Sprucefield, Lisburn and Holywood Exchange, Belfast would not open until due to protracted legal challenges.
At the end of it announced price cuts on of its most popular own-label lines. John Benjamin and Arthur were the only two of the founders' sons whose own sons joined the family business. Arthur's son James, who had joined the company in , was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his accomplishments. He created new factory facilities at Sainsbury's headquarters in and also set up the Haverhill line of meat products.
Robert was knighted in Alan and Robert shared the presidency of Sainsbury's, John was chairman, and Robert's son David was deputy chairman through the s. With typical caution, Sainsbury's did not actually use the word supermarket in its own communications until the late s, even though it owned almost Nonetheless, the company was at the forefront of new technology.
In , for example, Sainsbury's became Britain's first food retailer to computerize its distribution system. In the late s, electronic cash registers at the checkout counter were replaced by scanners. Multibuy, a special feature of the scanning system, automatically applied a discount to multiple purchases of certain designated items. Spaceman, a microcomputer planning system, used on-screen graphics to plot the allocation of merchandise to specific shelf space in the stores.
Sainsbury's centenary, , sparked a series of rapid changes. Alan's son, John, became chairman of a new management tier, which reported directly to the board of directors.
Departmental directors were given greater responsibility for operating functions to strengthen the centralized control that had always been company policy. With ordering, warehousing, and distribution computerized, strict controls on the speeded-up activity were vital. Sainsbury's became a public company in , two years after making a name change: the period after the initial J was dropped. Personnel policies at Sainsbury's adhered closely to the principles established at its founding: thorough training, open communication, and continuing training on the job.
The company recruited actively at schools and universities, preferring to "grow its own talent," but holding employees to high standards of performance. Sainsbury's employees participated in profit sharing and share option schemes. The company's community involvement was also active, taking many forms. John Sainsbury addressed the London Conference on saving the ozone layer early in The only retailer invited to take part in the conference and the associated exhibition, he presented details of the technological changes made in Sainsbury's aerosol products and plant operations to eliminate chlorofluorocarbons from their operations.
Incubation of small start-up businesses, arts sponsorships, and grand-scale charity drives were other ongoing projects. Forces within the grocery industry compelled Sainsbury's to begin a program of diversification within the retail category. Increased competition from discounters threatened to squeeze profit margins. Creeping market saturation and flat population growth combined to intensify competition as well. Sainsbury's began to make significant additions to its nonfood merchandise for the first time.
The company's first petrol station, a convenience for shoppers, was opened in at a Cambridge store. To gain the economies of direct supplier-to-store deliveries, Sainsbury's formed a joint venture with British Home Stores in , launching a chain of hypermarkets--huge stores combining grocery items and hard goods--called Savacentre. Sainsbury's retained control of all food-related operations, leaving nonfood lines to its partner until , when Savacentre became a wholly owned subsidiary of Sainsbury's.
Homebase, a chain of upscale do-it-yourself stores, was in the planning stage by The partners opened their first Homebase home and garden center in , and had expanded the chain to 76 locations by the mids. Sainsbury's looked to overseas markets for growth opportunities as well.
In , the company began to amass shares in Shaw's Supermarkets, a New England supermarket chain. Founded in , Shaw's heritage of carrying high-quality food at the lowest prices meshed well with the ideals of the British firm. And like Sainsbury's, Shaw's has also been at the forefront of computer technology. By , Sainsbury's had completed the purchase of percent of the 60 stores in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, and had plans to open additional stores in that area.
The company boosted its holdings in the United States with the acquisition of 50 percent of Giant Food Inc. Sainsbury's was expected to purchase the remaining shares of the store chain by the end of the decade. Closer to home, Sainsbury's opened a Savacentre hypermarket in Scotland in Sainsbury's also developed a powerful private-label program.
By the mids, its own-label products generated 66 percent of total sales.
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