Spar has won the first NACS International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award for its operations in China, beating off competition from Sainsbury’s.
Spar China fended off competition from Pick N Pay in South Africa, Ryan’s Centra in Ireland and Sainsbury’s Local in the UK to win the online vote for the gong.
The prestigious award was presented during the Insight NACS Future of International Convenience Retailing Event in London.
Readers of Global Convenience Store Focus were asked to vote for their favourite online after reading company profiles and viewing photographic and video evidence.
The Spar Hongtu store in Dongguan City, Guangdong Province is independently owned by the Hu family, hypermarket retailers from Dongguan. The Hu family began their business in 1992 with a 60sqm store and 3 employees; today they operate 26 hypermarkets with 300,000sqm of selling space and employ 7,000 people.
Spar has benefited from the fact the average basket spend in hypermarkets in China is low as people shop little and often. The convenience store is growing sales and margin and seeing an increase in the number of transactions on a monthly basis. The average basket spend is equivalent to 50 per cent of basket spend in a hypermarket.
Joe Bona, president at CBX and a judge on the panel, said: “Spar China was a number one contender for the title, not just because it is such a category shift for that market but because it is really world class for any market.”
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