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Ocado
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Ocado is a British internet grocery retailer headquartered in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Although an independent business Ocado is partly owned by the John Lewis Partnership pension fund (the John Lewis Partnership owns the Waitrose supermarket chain). The limited company was founded in January 2002 by Jonathan Faiman, Jason Gissing and Tim Steiner former Goldman Sachs merchant bankers. Ocado's products include own brand groceries from the Waitrose supermarket chain, as well a selection of name brand groceries and other items including flowers, toys and magazines.
The company has a warehouse based model operating from a purpose-built picking centre purely on-line without any physical shops.
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Encyclopedia
Ocado is a British internet grocery retailer headquartered in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Although an independent business Ocado is partly owned by the John Lewis Partnership pension fund (the John Lewis Partnership owns the Waitrose supermarket chain). The limited company was founded in January 2002 by Jonathan Faiman, Jason Gissing and Tim Steiner former Goldman Sachs merchant bankers. Ocado's products include own brand groceries from the Waitrose supermarket chain, as well a selection of name brand groceries and other items including flowers, toys and magazines.
The company has a warehouse based model operating from a purpose-built picking centre purely on-line without any physical shops. As of 2008 Ocado operates in South East England, the Midlands, North West England, the South Coast of England and most of Yorkshire.
Waitrose also offers its own internet shopping service called WaitroseDeliver, which is serviced directly from certain branches. Ocado's main competitors are the internet grocery businesses of three of the Big Four British supermarket chains, Asda, Sainsbury's and Tesco. The other Big Four supermarket, Morrisons, is not in the internet grocery market, nor are the UK fifth largest grocer, The Co-operative Group, the other major upmarket grocery specialist (apart from Waitrose) Marks & Spencer, or the discount chains.
History
Ocado was founded in January 2002 by former Goldman Sachs merchant bankers Jonathan Faiman, Jason Gissing, and Tim Steiner. When the company first started they ran every part of the business themselves.
Over the last 8 years the company has grown from 3 people to over 3,000. In September 2006, Michael Grade became non-executive chairman of Ocado, shortly after Goldman Sachs were appointed as financial advisors. This has led to perennial speculation that the business will seek a listing on the stock market.
Ocado is believed to have losses of about £30 million for the 2007 fiscal year, bringing its total losses to approximately £300 million. Its executives said in March 2008 that they expected it to become profitable by the end of 2008, and possibly to float and seek a stock-market listing. In November 2008 the John Lewis Partnership transferred its shareholding, then 29%, into its staff pension fund. It also agreed a five year supply deal with the business, replacing its previous one year rolling deal.
Innovation
Recently Ocado announced it would take back all plastic bags and recycle them locally into new Ocado plastic bags.
Name
The name Ocado is a made up word. According to non-executive director of Ocado, Jez Frampton (CEO of Interbrand), the name Ocado was meant to be evocative of fresh fruit. The avocado is the hardest fruit to protect through the food chain. Frampton said the name scored "off the scale" when tested with potential consumers.
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