A new dawn for Eurospar
With a whole new concept being rolled out, Eurospar is hoping to emerge as a leader in supermarket shopping by taking advantage of the small and often trend that has evolved in recent years. Malachy Hanberry, Eurospar managing director speaks to Fionnuala Carolan about the huge investment that has been made in the brand
Print17 June 2015
Eurospar Lucan is the first store to unveil the new concept
Eurospar, Ballyowen Castle Shopping Centre, Lucan is a blueprint for how Malachy Hanberry hopes each and every Eurospar store will develop across the country over the next few years. It is evident that a huge body of work has gone into creating and fine tuning this impressive store so that it can deliver on the type of shopping experience that BWG believes the Irish consumer wants.
Joint retail operators of EuroSpar Lucan are Tony O’Connor and John Hanley. The duo opened the first ever Eurospar in the country 18 years ago and their drive and enthusiasm for the brand has not waned in the interim. They are proud of their new look store which houses unique features such as a Halal butchers, a computer repair shop and a dry cleaning service. It might be an overused phrase but in this case it is deserved as this store has the ‘wow factor’. From the entrance you are greeted with a vibrant fruit and veg category which leads you into a fresh food hall. What is very evident across the store is the strong value proposition throughout. Every inch of this store has been examined and made to work for optimum return.
Hanberry explains the idea behind the new design concept. “A whole part of the new ambience is that less is more. You’ll see an awful lot of white and there is less visual noise and that is intentional so you are more focused on the products.
“One of our plans was increased availability. Did we have the right products on the shelves in each shop all the time? In the background over the last two years, we have done a huge project to develop core ranges across every single category in the store for Eurospar and for our Spar convenience stores.”
He says that leveraging the quality of the Spar own brand products is a part of the new concept. “There is massive value there for customers and own brands are now so credible. There is bias towards own brand so if there is an own brand available we expect the store to stock it. They also have a bias in relation to their location on the shelf.”
The time is now
The store hosts an impressive bakery section
Hanberry took on the job of managing director of Eurospar in the past year but he has been on the board of BWG since 2004 and says he has always had a special interest in this brand. “We felt that now was the time to put the focus on Eurospar. I have a mantra that goes, ‘where focus goes, energy flows’. That’s the approach we are taking to both our Spar and Eurospar brands.”
He rejects the suggestion that there has been a lack of investment in the brand in some time but says, it was more of a case that his focus was split between the Spar and Eurospar brands in his previous role as sales and retail advisory services director. “I was responsible for Eurospar but I wasn’t able to give it the real focus that it needed,” he explains. “My background and my instinct are more supermarket focused anyway. Also within the business, I’ve found that in developing initiatives and programmes around a supermarket business, it has a great potential to flow down to a convenience business, whereas developing the other way around doesn’t necessarily flow up.”
Hanberry feels that this is the right time to invest despite the challenges in the market. “We decided about a year and a half ago that we needed to right the Eurospar business. The consumer mindset is now normalised. It’s not recession shopping anymore. We all know the market is difficult; even apart from competitors, we’re in a deflationary market. The recent consumer price index showed that prices are down 2.8% and 3% in alcohol so against that background everyone is under pressure for sales so now is the right time for us to focus on differentiation. There are a lot of services and products in this store that you would not be able to buy in the discounters and that’s the whole objective,” he says.
The right store
The Halal butcher has been hugely successful since its inception
Finding the right store to trial this new concept was actually an easy process for Hanberry. “There are 50 Eurospars altogether,” he explains. “I was charged with deciding where our first store would be and this store tripped off my tongue. Lucan was our first store and it was certainly a catalyst for the growth of the Eurospar brand, no question about it.”
While this project was initiated by BWG here in Ireland, the team worked on the new design concepts with a view to this being the model for the rollout of the next generation of Eurospars across the globe and was recently profiled at the International Spar Congress in Vienna.
“Spar International work with Spar Ireland on practically every major showcase product because Spar Ireland is very interested in the brand at international level. We are renowned for our convenience stores being ahead of the curve. We want to be ahead of the curve,” he says.
New targets
The Lucan store was set an initial target for year one to grow the business, in a declining market by 20% and they say they are well on their way to doing that now. In fact every one of the fresh departments are almost at 40% growth already. “We’re trading eight weeks in the new look store and during that period those departments have traded ahead of our expectations,” he says.
Naturally, Hanberry hopes to attract other independent retailers to Eurospar. However his focus at the moment is quality and not quantity. “I want to get all the stores up to the standard of this store. Our plan is not just about how the shop looks but it’s about right sizing our value offering. We have a six point plan which includes a self-imposed mandate around freshness. We have a zero tolerance to freshness. If a customer buys something that they are not happy with then not only will we replace it, we will give them their money back. That’s our promise.”
They are also developing a customer feedback service and Hanberry says he wants to hear the complaints rather than the plaudits. “There’s great value in a customer that tells you when something is wrong. That’s a customer that is your friend.”
There is also a very strong strategic ambition around rewards and delivering value to the consumer through their rewards programme. Of all these initiatives, he says: “We want to encapsulate all of these aims in a nice looking shop. The nice looking shop on its own will not drive sales. It will only drive cost.”
Eurospar Bruff is currently in the throes of implementing the new concept, as is Eurospar Skerries. Hartestown is next on the list. “We have a list of 10/12 stores to start,” he explains. We will certainly have at least 6/8 stores finished to this standard by the end of this year. That’s the plan.”
Planned investment
Chef Neven Maguire carries out a demonstration in-store for the official opening of the new look Lucan store
When BWG announced that Spar South Africa was to take an 80% share of the business earlier this year, they promised there would be investment in the business going forward due to this injection of capital. Hanberry says that although these plans for Eurospar were in the pipeline before that deal, the Spar South Africa connection will be hugely beneficial to the Eurospar brand. “These guys are supermarket retailers and they are going to help me roll out a range of support services to our Eurospar retailers in Ireland because I’ll be able to leverage their knowledge and expertise and all the services they have developed over the years. We had started our planning around Eurospar long before any discussions happened with Spar South Africa so we had this in planning but we’ve definitely got great liberty around resources in terms of roll out. Graham O’Connor and the team over there are so supportive of what we are trying to do here.”
Hanberry is confident that all this work on the brand will reap rewards in the not too distant future. “When you ask me about growth numbers, I know growth will come. Success will breed success. Our retailers will be our greatest advocates. Tony and John are having a lot of impromptu visits from retailers from other groups and they have lots of positive things to say but money talks so we’ll wait to see how things perform and I can’t wait to tell them!”
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