J Sainsbury Plc history, company profile (overview) and history video
J Sainsbury Plc engages in the business of grocery and related retailing. The company operates through three segments: Retailing, Financial Services and Property Investments. It operates convenience and supermarkets that offer various food and non-food products and services primarily under the Sainsbury’s brand. The company was founded by John James Sainsbury and Mary Ann Sainsbury in 1869 and is headquarteredin London, the United Kingdom.“
“J Sainsbury History
Origin and growth (1869–1955)
Sainsbury’s was established as a partnership in 1869 when John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary Ann opened a store at 173 Drury Lane in Holborn, London. He started as a retailer of fresh foods and later expanded into packaged groceries such as tea and sugar. His trading philosophy, as stated on a sign outside his first shop in Islington, was “Quality perfect, prices lower”.
It was very innovative in that its stores, instead of featuring five own-brand lines like arch-rival Home and Colonial, it offered a wide range of own label lines in comparison. Instead of sawdust floors and wooden counters, Sainsbury’s boasted marble counters, mosaic floors and white-tiled walls. Staff even had a uniform of white aprons. Stores started to look similar, so people could recognise them throughout London, a high cast-iron ‘J. SAINSBURY’ sign featured on every store so their stores could be seen on coaches and omnibuses, and round-the-back deliveries started to add extra convenience and not upset rivals due to Sainsbury’s popularity.
In 1922 J Sainsbury was incorporated as a private company, as ‘J. Sainsbury Limited’, when it became the UK’s largest grocery group.
By this time each store had six departments: dairy, bacon and hams, poultry and game, cooked meats and fresh meats. Groceries had not been introduced until 1903 when John James purchased a grocer’s branch at 12 Kingsland High Street, Dalston. 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 1928, there were 128 shops. His last words were said to be ‘Keep the shops well lit’. He was replaced by his eldest son, John Benjamin Sainsbury, who had gone into partnership with his father in 1915.
During the 1930s and 1940s, with the company now run by John James Sainsbury’s eldest son, John Benjamin Sainsbury, the company continued to refine its product offer and maintain its leadership in terms of store design, convenience and cleanliness. The company acquired the Midlands-based Thoroughgood chain in 1936.
Alan Sainsbury, the founder’s grandson (later Lord Sainsbury of Drury Lane) became joint managing director of Sainsbury’s along with his brother Sir Robert Sainsbury in 1938 after their father, John Benjamin Sainsbury, had a minor heart attack.
Following the outbreak of World War II, many of the men that worked for Sainsbury’s were called to do National Service and were replaced by women. Given Sainsbury’s reputation for quality foods at fair prices, the Second World War were difficult times for Sainsbury’s, as most of its stores were trading in the London area and were bombed or damaged. 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 1943 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 1951.
Self-service and heyday (1956–1991)
In 1956, Alan Sainsbury became chairman after his father, John Benjamin Sainsbury’s death. During the 1950s and 1960s Sainsbury’s pioneered self-service supermarkets in the UK. On a trip to the United States of America, Alan Sainsbury realised the benefits of self-service stores, and believed the future of Sainsbury’s was self-service supermarkets of 10,000 sq ft (930 m2), with eventually the added bonus of a car park for extra convenience. The first self-service branch opened in Croydon in 1950.
Sainsbury’s was a pioneer in the development of own-brand goods; the aim was to offer products that matched the quality of nationally branded goods, but at a lower price. It expanded more cautiously than Tesco, shunning acquisitions, and it never offered trading stamps.
Until the company went public on 12 July 1973, 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. Within one minute the list of applications was closed: £495 million had been offered for £14.5 million available shares. The Sainsbury family at the time retained 85% of the firm’s shares. The feverish press that surrounded the flotation greatly enhanced the company’s new dynamic image.
The company benefited, too, from a consistency of management stemming from family ownership and control. The fact that it did not go public until 1973 was not a disadvantage; unlike Tesco, Sainsbury’s grew organically rather than by takeovers, and, at least during this period, did not need to use its shares as an acquisition currency. Sainsbury’s had the advantage, shared to some extent by Tesco, of a strong market position in London and the South East.
Most of the senior positions were held by family members; John Davan Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover),[21] a member of the fourth generation of the founding family, took over the chairmanship from his uncle Sir Robert Sainsbury in 1969, who had been chairman for two years from 1967 following Alan Sainsbury’s retirement.
Sainsbury’s started to replace its 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) High Street stores with self-service supermarkets above 20,000 sq ft (1,900 m2), which were either in out-of-town locations or in regenerated town centres. Sainsbury’s policy was to invest in uniform, well-designed stores with a strong emphasis on quality; its slogan was “good food costs less at Sainsbury’s”. During the 1970s the average size of Sainsbury’s stores rose from 10,000 sq ft (930 m2) to around 18,000 sq ft (1,700 m2); the first edge-of-town store, with 24,000 sq ft (2,200 m2) of selling space, was opened at Coldhams Lane in Cambridge in 1974. The last counter service branch closed inPeckham in 1982.
Although these larger stores contained some non-food items, they were not intended to match what Asda had been doing in the north; Sainsbury’s focused more single-mindedly on food.
To participate in the hypermarket sector, Sainsbury’s formed a joint venture, known as SavaCentre, with British Home Stores. The first SavaCentre store was opened inWashington, Tyne and Wear, in 1977; nearly half the space, amounting to some 35,000 sq ft (3,300 m2), was devoted to textiles, electrical goods and hardware. As the hypermarket format became more mainstream, with rivals such as Asda and Tesco launching ever-larger stores, it was decided that a separate brand was no longer needed and the stores were converted to the regular Sainsbury’s superstore format in 1999. 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.
Another diversification took place in 1979, when Sainsbury’s formed a joint venture with the Belgian retailer, GB-Inno-BM, to set up a chain of do-it-yourself stores under theHomebase name. The plan was to open a DIY store with a supermarket-style layout. Homebase was tripled in size in 1995 with the acquisition of the rival Texas Homecare from the Ladbroke Group plc. Sainsbury’s sold the Homebase chain in December 2000 in a twofold deal worth £969 million. Sales of the chain of stores to venture capitalist Schroder Ventures generated £750 million and sale of 28 development sites, which had been earmarked for future Homebase stores, were sold for £219 million to rival B&Q’s parent company, Kingfisher plc.
The company’s growth was still largely based on food, with only a modest contribution from the SavaCentre business (of which Sainsbury’s took full control in 1989). There was, however, diversification outside the UK.
In November 1983 Sainsbury’s purchased 21% of Shaw’s Supermarkets, the second largest grocery group in the northeastern United States (primarily in New England). In June 1987, Sainsbury’s acquired the rest of the company with the intention of creating a high-quality regional food retailing business based on the same principles as the UK-based operation.
In 1985 the chairman reported that over the preceding ten years profits had grown from £15 million to over £168 million, a compound annual rise of 30.4% – after allowing for inflation a real annual growth rate of 17.6%.
During the 1980s the Company invested in new technology: the proportion of sales passing through EPOS scanning checkouts rose from 1% to 90%.
With the advent of out of town shopping complexes during the 1980s, Sainsbury’s was one of the many big retail names to open new stores in such complexes – notably with its store at the Meadowhall Shopping Centre, Sheffield (originally as a SavaCentre) in 1990, which was converted into a regular Sainsbury store in 2005, and was closed in 2006 and the Merry Hill Shopping Centre at Brierley Hill in the West Midlands (part of an Enterprise Zone), which opened in September 1989 to replace a store in Dudley town centre. 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 1992.
Sainsbury’s expanded its operation into Scotland with a store in Darnley opening in January 1992, (the SavaCentre at Cameron Toll in Edinburgh had opened in 1984). In June 1995 Sainsbury’s announced its intention to move into the Northern Ireland market, until that point dominated by local companies. Between December 1996 and December 1998 the company opened seven stores. Two others at Sprucefield, Lisburn and Holywood Exchange, Belfast would not open until 2003 due to protracted legal challenges. Sainsbury’s move into Northern Ireland was undertaken in a very different way from that of Tesco. While Sainsbury’s outlets were all new developments, Tesco (apart from one Tesco Metro) instead purchased existing chains from Associated British Foods (see Tesco Ireland).
In 1991, the group boasted a 12-year record of dividend increases of 20% or more and earnings per share had risen by as much for nearly as long. Also in 1991 the company raised £489 million in new equity to fund the expansion of superstores.
Sainsbury’s decline (1992–1998)
In 1992 the long-time CEO John Davan Sainsbury retired and was succeeded as chairman and chief executive by his cousin, David Sainsbury (later Lord Sainsbury of Turville); this brought about a change in management style – David was more consensual and less hierarchical but not in strategy or in corporate beliefs about the company’s place in the market. Mistakes by David Sainsbury and his successors, Dino Adriano and Peter Davis, included the rejection of loyalty cards, the reluctance to move into non-food retailing, the indecision between whether to go quality or for value, “the sometimes brutal treatment of suppliers” which led to suppliers favouring Tesco over Sainsbury’s and the unsuccessful John Cleese advertising campaign.
At the end of 1993 it announced price cuts on 300 of its most popular own-label lines. Significantly, this came three months after Tesco had launched its Tesco Value line. A few months later Sainsbury’s announced that margins had fallen, that the pace of new superstore construction would slow down, and that it would write down the value of some of its properties.
In 1994 Sainsbury’s announced a new town-centre format, Sainsbury’s Central, again a response to Tesco’s Metro, which was already established in five locations. Also in 1994 Sainsbury’s lost the takeover battle for William Low (like Tesco, Sainsbury’s had long been under-represented in Scotland).Also that year David Sainsbury dismissed Tesco’s clubcard initiative as ‘an electronic version of Green Shield Stamps’; the company was soon forced to backtrack, introducing its own Reward Card 18 months later.
For much of the 20th century Sainsbury’s had been the market leader in the UK supermarket sector, but in 1996 it lost its place as the UK’s largest grocer to Tesco.
In addition to Shaw’s, Sainsbury’s bought a minority stake in another supermarket group, Giant Food, based in Washington DC, although this shareholding was subsequently sold when Ahold of the Netherlands made a full bid for the company.
Sainsbury’s also trebled the size of its Homebase do-it-yourself business in 1996 by merging its business with Texas Homecare, which it acquired from Ladbroke for £290 million.
In addition to expansion of larger formats and banking services, Sainsbury’s decided to provide shopping services to small towns, which led to the construction of “Country Town” stores. These were small supermarkets which enabled large villages to get their weekly shopping without travelling to large out of town stores. These “Country Town” stores were opened mainly across the south east which is historically Sainsbury’s strongest market. Potential sites were identified and finally stores were opened in Attleborough and Chipping Ongar (Essex) towards the end of 1998. The “Country Town” format may now be discontinued but the stores which were completed have now been brought up to standard with the rest of the company’s portfolio and continue to trade strongly even with many having larger stores within 10 minutes travel from the “”Country Town” stores.
In 1996 the company reported its first fall in profits for 22 years. David Sainsbury announced management changes, involving the appointment of two chief executives, one in charge of UK supermarkets (Dino Adriano) and the other responsible for Homebase and the US (David Bremner).
Finally, in 1998, David Sainsbury himself resigned from the company to pursue a career in politics. He was succeeded as non-executive chairman by George Bull, who had been chairman of Diageo,and Adriano was promoted to be Group Chief Executive.
The brand re-launch (1998–2003)
In June 1998 Sainsbury’s unveiled its new corporate identity, which was developed by M&C Saatchi, which consisted of the current company logo, new corporate colours of “living orange” and blue, Interstate as the company’s new general use lowercase font from the old all uppercase font, the new slogan “Making life taste better”, which replaced its old slogan from the 1960s and new staff uniforms.The strapline was dropped in May 2005 and replaced in September of that year by “Try something new today.” This new brand statement was created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO. While the Interstate font was used almost exclusively for many years, the company introduced another informal font in 2005 which is used in a wide range of advertising and literature. Since 2013 it is now “Live well for less”; the design has varied on the receipts.
In 1999 Sainsbury’s acquired an 80.1% share of Egyptian Distribution Group SAE, a retailer in Egypt with 100 stores and 2,000 employees. However poor profitability led to the sale of this share in 2001. On 8 October 1999 the CEO Dino Adriano lost control of the core UK supermarket business, instead assuming responsibility for the rest of the group. David Bremner became head of the UK supermarkets. This was “derided” by the city and described as a “fudge”. On 14 January 2000 Sainsbury’s reversed this decision by announcing the replacement of Adriano by Sir Peter Davis effective from March.
Between 2000–2004, Sir Peter Davis was chief executive of Sainsbury’s. Davis’ appointment was well received by investors and analysts. The appointment was only confirmed after Sainsbury’s was sure of the support of the Sainsbury family, who snubbed Davis’ offer of becoming chief executive in the early 1990s, following which he became Chief Executive of Prudential plc.
In his first two years he exceeded profit targets, although by 2004 the group had suffered a decline in performance relative to its competitors and was demoted to third in the UK grocery market. Davis also oversaw an almost £3 billion upgrade of stores, distribution and IT equipment, entitled ‘Business Transformation Programme’, but his successor would later reveal that much of this investment was wasted and he failed in his key goal – improving availability. Part of this investment saw the construction of four fully automated depots, which at £100 million each cost four times more than standard depots.
In 2001, Sainsbury’s moved into its current headquarters at Holborn, London. Sainsbury’s previously occupied Stamford House and 12 other buildings around Southwark. However the accounting department remained separate at Streatham. The building was designed by architectural firm Foster and Partners and had been developed on the former Mirror Group site for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), however Sainsbury’s acquired the 25-year lease when Accenture pulled out.[43] Sainsbury’s is a founding member of theNectar loyalty card scheme, which was launched in late 2002 in conjunction with Debenhams, Barclaycard and BP.Since then both Debenhams and Barclaycard have left the scheme. The Nectar scheme replaced the Sainsbury’s Reward Card; accrued points were transferred over.
In 2003 Wm Morrison Supermarkets (trading as Morrisons) made an offer for the Safeway group, prompting a bidding war between the major supermarkets. The Trade and Industry Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, referred the various bids to the Competition Commission which reported its findings on 26 September. The Commission found that all bids, with the exception of Morrison’s, would “operate against the public interest”. As part of the approval Morrison’s was to dispose of 53 of the combined group’s stores. In May 2004 Sainsbury’s announced that it would acquire 14 of these stores (13 Safeway stores and 1 Morrison’s outlet) located primarily in the Midlands and the North of England.
‘Making Sainsbury’s Great Again’ (2004–2006)
At the end of March 2004 Davis was promoted to chairman and was replaced as CEO by Justin King. King joined Sainsbury’s in from Marks and Spencer plc where he was a director with responsibility for its food division and Kings Super Markets, Inc. subsidiary in the United States. Schooled in Solihull and a graduate of the University of Bath, where he took a business administration degree, King was also previously a managing director at Asda with responsibility for hypermarkets. In June 2004 Davis was forced to quit in the face of an impending shareholder revolt over his salary and bonuses. Investors were angered by a bonus share award of over £2 million despite poor company performance. On 19 July 2004 Davis’ replacement, Philip Hampton, was appointed as chairman.
King ordered a direct mail campaign to 1 million Sainsbury’s customers as part of his 6-month business review asking them what they wanted from the company and where the company could improve. This reaffirmed the commentary of retail analysts – the group was not ensuring that shelves are fully stocked, this due to the failure of the IT systems introduced by Peter Davis. On 19 October 2004 King unveiled the results of the business review and his plans to revive the company’s fortunes – in a three-year recovery plan entitled ‘Making Sainsbury’s Great Again’. This was generally well received by both the stock market and the media. Immediate plans included laying off 750 headquarters staff and the recruitment of around 3,000 shop-floor staff to improve the quality of service and the firm’s main problem: stock availability. The aim would be to increase sales revenue by £2.5 billion by the financial year ending March 2008. Another significant announcement was the halving of thedividend to increase funds available for price cuts and quality.
King hired Lawrence Christensen as supply chain director in 2004. Previously he was an expert in logistics at Safeway, but left following its takeover by Morrisons. Immediate supply chain improvements included the reactivation of two distribution centres. In 2006 Christensen commented on the four automated depots introduced by Davis, saying “not a single day went by without one, if not all of them, breaking down… The systems were flawed. They have to stop for four hours every day for maintenance. But because they were constantly breaking down you would be playing catch up. It was a vicious circle.” Christensen said a fundamental mistake was to build four such depots at once, rather than building one which could be thoroughly tested before progressing with the others. At the time of the business review on 19 October 2004, referring to the availability problems, Justin King said “Lawrence hadn’t seen anything that he hadn’t seen before. He just hadn’t seen them all in the same place at the same time”. In 2007 Sainsbury’s announced a further £12 million investment in its depots to keep pace with sales growth and the removal of the failed automated systems from its depots. In addition, it did a deal with IBM to upgrade its Electronic – Point of Sale systems as a result of increased sales.
Sainsbury’s sold its American subsidiary, Shaw’s, to Albertsons in 2004. Also in 2004 Sainsbury’s expanded its share of the convenience store market through acquisitions.Bell’s Stores, a 54 store chain based in north-east England was acquired in February 2004. Jackson’s Stores, a chain of 114 stores based in Yorkshire and the North Midlands, was purchased in August 2004. JB Beaumont, a chain of 6 stores in the East Midlands was acquired in November 2004. SL Shaw Ltd, which owned six stores was acquired on 28 April 2005 for £6 million.
Since the launch of King’s recovery programme, the company has reported nineteen consecutive quarters of sales growth, most recently in October 2009. Early sales increases were credited to solving problems with the company’s distribution system.More recent sales improvements have been put down to price cuts and the company’s focus on fresh and healthy food.
Takeover bids (2007)
On 2 February 2007, after months of speculation about a private equity bid, CVC Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) and Blackstone Group announced that they were considering a bid for Sainsbury’s. The consortium grew to include Goldman Sachs and Texas Pacific Group. On 6 March 2007, with a formal bid yet to be tabled, the Takeover Panel issued a bid deadline of 13 April.
On 4 April KKR left the consortium to focus on its bid for Alliance Boots. On 5 April the consortium submitted an “indicative offer” of 562p a share to the company’s board. After discussions between Sir Philip Hampton and the two largest Sainsbury family shareholders Lord Sainsbury of Turville and Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover the offer was rejected.[61] On 9 April the indicative offer was raised to 582p a share, however this too was rejected. This meant the consortium could not satisfy its own preconditions for a bid, most importantly 75% shareholder support; the combined Sainsbury family holding at the time was 18%.
Lord Sainsbury of Turville, who then held 7.75% of Sainsbury’s, stated that he could see no reason why the Sainsbury’s board would even consider opening its books for due diligence for anything less than 600p per share. Lord Sainsbury of Preston Candover, with just under 3%, was more extreme than his cousin, and refused to sell at any price. He believed any offer at that stage of Sainsbury’s recovery was likely to undervalue the business, and with private equity seeking high returns on their investments, saw no reason to sell, given that the current management, led by Justin King, could deliver the extra profit generated for the benefit of existing investors. He claimed the bid ‘brought nothing to the business’, and that high levels of debt would significantly weaken the company and its competitive position in the long-term, which would have an adverse effect on Sainsbury’s stakeholders.
On 11 April the CVC-led consortium abandoned its offer, stating “it became clear the consortium would be unable to make a proposal that would result in a successful offer.”
In May 2007 Sainsbury’s identified five areas of growth: Growth of non-food ranges; opening of new convenience stores and growth of online home delivery and banking operations; Expansion of supermarket space through new stores and development of the company’s “largely underdeveloped store portfolio”; and “active property management”.
On 25 April 2007 Delta Two, a Qatari investment company, bought a 14% stake in Sainsbury’s causing its share price to rise 7.17%, which was then upped to 17.6%. Their interest in Sainsbury’s is thought to centre on its property portfolio. They increased their stake to 25% in June 2007.
On 18 July 2007 BBC News reported that Delta Two had tabled a conditional bid proposal.
Paul Taylor, the principal of Delta Two, flew David and John Sainsbury to Sardinia to reveal and discuss the potential bid which amounted to 600p per share.
The family had reservations about the price of the bid. Secondly, they were concerned about the proposed structure which involved splitting the business into an operating company and a highly leveraged property company. Thirdly, they were concerned about adequacy of funding both for the bid and for the company’s pension scheme.
On 5 November 2007 it was announced Delta Two had abandoned its takeover bid due to the “deterioration of credit markets” and concerns about funding the company’s pension scheme.
Recent developments (2007–present)
On 4 October 2007 Sainsbury’s announced plans to relocate its Store Support Centre from Holborn to Kings Cross in 2011. The new office will be part of a new complex to allow for both cost savings and energy efficiency. These savings will be made through the use of efficient building materials and design, a combined heat and power energy centre and the use of renewable energy sources.
In January 2008 Sainsbury’s brought its number of Northern Ireland supermarkets to 11 with the purchase of two Curley’s Supermarkets in Dungannon and Belfast, which includes those stores’ petrol stations and off licences.
In March 2009 Sainsbury’s announced it was buying 24 stores from The Co-operative, 22 of which were Somerfield stores and the remaining 2 were Co-op stores: these are part of their estate which The Co-operative were required to sell following the completion of theSomerfield takeover. A further 9 stores were purchased from The Co-operative in June 2009. These were concentrated in west Wales, the north of England and Scotland where Sainsbury’s market share is low.
In November 2007, Sainsburys centralised its HR department, relocating to the 17th and 18th floors of Manchester’s Arndale Centre to form a Shared Service Centre which was initially trialled to deal with Recruitment in Scotland and was later rolled out to the whole country. July 2009 saw the HR Shared Service Centre in Manchester expand to include most HR Processes in its Colleague Administration Department and Occupational Health enquiries in a dedicated unit. Since April 2012, the centre has began a gradual relocation to its new offices in the centre of Lincoln, along with a rebrand and partial relaunch as Sainsburys HR Services.
In May 2010 Justin King announced that Sainsbury’s pledged to involve each of its 850 stores in the promotion of the Paralympics after the multimillion-pound deal with Locog to be the main sponsor of the London 2012 Paralympic games. The sum was not disclosed. Sainsbury’s will sell Paralympic merchandise and become involved in high-profile events such as the torch relay. It will be one of only two sponsors able to take advantage of the limited branding allowed within the Games. The promotional rights do not extend to the Olympics. After the Paralympic Games the company decided to sponsor the British Paralympic Association through to Rio 2016.
In September 2011 it was announced that the “Try Something New Today” slogan would be replaced with “Live Well For Less”, this decision was made after an 18 month business review. The slogan will be phased in, and will be prominent on till receipts from 16 September.
On 30 November 2011 Sainsbury’s reached the first milestone in its 2020 vision by opening its 1000th store in Irvine, Scotland. To celebrate this, Sainsbury’s doubled its staff discount to 20% for the first 4 days of December.
Further re-organisation has seen Central Finance Operations move from the Holborn Head Office to Manchester and Property Division move to Ansty Park in Coventry. Most of the remaining Holborn operations are likely to move to Coventry in due course, as Sainsbury’s looks to reduce costs by moving out of Central London.”
*Information from Forbes.com and Wikipedia.org
**Video published on YouTube by “83charlieboy“