Super de Boer N.V. is a Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 retail

Retailing

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

 company which operates a chain of supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

s in the country. The holding company

Holding company

A holding company is a company or firm that owns other companies' outstanding stock. It usually refers to a company which does not produce goods or services itself; rather, its purpose is to own shares of other companies. Holding companies allow the reduction of risk for the owners and can allow...

 for Super de Boer was formerly named Laurus N.V., but changed its name to that of its only remaining retail brand in January 2008. There are currently 330 Super de Boer stores exploited in the Netherlands, partly owned by franchisors

Franchising

Franchising is the practice of using another firm's successful business model. The word 'franchise' is of anglo-French derivation - from franc- meaning free, and is used both as a noun and as a verb....

. The French food retail group Casino Guichard

Groupe Casino

Groupe Casino is a large French multinational corporation, formerly part of the CAC 40 index, whose main business is with retail and distribution in hyper and supermarkets. The company's head office is in Saint-Étienne....

 purchased a 37% stake in the firm in 2002, and increased this to 57% by 2008. The firm agreed to be taken private by Dutch rival Jumbo

Jumbo (supermarket)

Jumbo is a supermarket chain in the Netherlands. It is part of the privately owned Van Eerd Group. Van Eerd was originally a grocery wholesale company, established in 1921. In 1983, Van Eerd started the "Jumbo Supermarkten" supermarket chain...

in October 2009 in a deal worth €552 million, with Casino selling its entire stake.

History

The Super de Boer name comes from grocery stores opened by brothers Evert and Jan De Boer in 1925 and 1932. The two De Boer chains merged in 1970. In 1997, De Boer and rival Unigro formed De Boer Unigro. The De Boer supermarket chain was merged with Unigro's Super to form Super de Boer. In 1998, De Boer Unigro merged with Vendex N.V. to form Laurus, which had plans to rebrand all the stores under the Konmar name. In 2003, Laurus stopped the rebranding operation because of disappointing results. Existing Konmar stores were either transformed back to Super de Boer or remained using the Konmar brand. In 2004, Laurus started renewing the store's image in "Operation Refresh Express". The goal of this renewal was to shake off the old, expensive image, as well as to freshen up the stores and private label products. Then, in 2006, Laurus decided to sell all of the Konmar and Edah stores to third parties, leaving Super de Boer as the only asset left for Laurus.

External links

• Super de Boer official site
• Super de Boer N.V. official site
• Corporate history