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Tesco Ireland
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Tesco Ireland Limited is a supermarket company in the Republic of Ireland formed in Tesco plc's 1997 acquisition of the Irish retailing operations of Associated British Foods plc; namely Powers Supermarkets Ltd. and its subsidiaries (see below).
Tesco operates supermarkets under the "Tesco" and "Tesco Ireland" brands, as well as three hypermarkets under the "Tesco Extra" brand, with a fourth store in Tullamore in development and a small number of convenience stores under the "Tesco Ireland Local" and "Tesco Express" brands.
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Encyclopedia
Tesco Ireland Limited is a supermarket company in the Republic of Ireland formed in Tesco plc's 1997 acquisition of the Irish retailing operations of Associated British Foods plc; namely Powers Supermarkets Ltd. and its subsidiaries (see below).
Tesco operates supermarkets under the "Tesco" and "Tesco Ireland" brands, as well as three hypermarkets under the "Tesco Extra" brand, with a fourth store in Tullamore in development and a small number of convenience stores under the "Tesco Ireland Local" and "Tesco Express" brands. Five petrol stations are also operated by the company, as well as an internet shopping service, tesco.ie. In 2007 the company launced its mobile telephone service, Tesco Mobile.
Tesco Ireland currently operates a number of 24 hour stores. It was announced in September 2008 that they would cease 23 stores with the 24 hour service. These stores include Bray and Greystones
Tesco Ireland was also the name of an earlier chain of stores in the Republic of Ireland acquired by Tesco in the early 1980s. These were originally founded by Albert Gubay as 3 Guys. In 1986, these were sold to the H Williams chain of supermarkets which subsequently collapsed, in the same year. Many ended up as outlets of other chains, including Crazy Prices, meaning they returned to Tesco ownership eventually.
History
Quinnsworth/Tesco/Crazy Prices
Quinnsworth was founded by Pat Quinn in the early 1970s, and was later sold to Power Supermarkets. During the 1970s the slogan used was "Let's get it all together at Quinnsworth". Power Supermarkets Ltd. became the parent company but used Quinnsworth as its marketing name. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Associated British Foods plc.
Quinnsworth is remembered for their choice of store sites, their most memorable act was the addition of the phrase Yellow Pack to the English language. Towards the end of Quinnsworth's life, Yellow Pack was replaced by Premium Choice as the own brand. Quinnsworth was also remembered for its advertising campaigns featuring its marketing director (and later chief executive) Maurice Pratt, who would personally introduce new product promotions, ending each advert with the company slogan, "That's Real Value".
Crazy Prices (occasionally Super Crazy Prices) was a brand used by Quinnsworth on some of its larger outlets. These were known for their cheap prices. Crazy Prices was one of the first retailers in Ireland to introduce late night opening (until 9pm) on Wednesdays, dubbing this night "Crazy Night" and running special in-store promotions. Until the mid-1990s, most Irish retailers only opened late one night a week, usually Thursday (in Dublin city) or Friday.
Quinnsworth's subsidiary in Northern Ireland was Stewart's Supermarkets Limited, which merged with Crazy Prices in Northern Ireland around 1996.
ABF sale and Tesco acquisition
In May 1997 Tesco acquired the retailing and supply chain operations of Associated British Foods - with the sole exception of Primark - for £643 million.
The grocery businesses acquired were those held by Comar Limited in the Republic of Ireland and Stewarts Supermarkets Limited in Northern Ireland. Comar was the parent company of Powers Supermarkets Ltd (trading as Quinnsworth) and Crazy Prices in the Republic of Ireland. Stewarts Supermarkets included Crazy Prices in Northern Ireland.
Other businesses acquired were the Stewarts Wine Barrel off-licence chain, the sports goods retailer Lifestyle Sports & Leisure Ltd. (marketed as "Lifestyle Sports"), the meat processing and packing business Kingsway Fresh Foods Ltd. and the Fresh fruit and vegetable distributor Daily Wrap Produce Ltd.
The Northern Ireland operations were folded into Tesco's core UK business, while the Republic of Ireland operations became Tesco Ireland. Lifestyle Sports was demerged in 1997 via a management buy-out. Stewarts Wine Barrel was sold to United Wine Merchants in 2001.
Tesco Ireland
After the acquisition of Power Supermarkets (PSL) by Tesco, the company name changed to "Tesco Ireland Limited". The first signs of the new regime was the almost immediate introduction of the Tesco own-brand (with advertising stating "Tesco at Quinnsworth and Crazy Prices"), with the completion of the phasing out of Yellow Pack and the other PSL own-brands such as KVI and Premium Choice. Maurice Pratt stayed on as chief executive of the Republic of Ireland operations.
Over the next few years the Quinnsworth and Crazy Prices chains were rebranded as "Tesco Ireland", using a white-on-blue variation of the familiar Tesco logo. The first store to open under the Tesco name was in Athlone in 1997. The changeover was at first relatively slow, with the Quinnsworth and Crazy Prices names continuing to appear on adverts for some time after the launch of the new company identity. Tesco's initial policy was not to change the name over the door until the store had been upgraded to Tesco's standards, in some older stores this meant a significant rebuild of the premises. The first fully rebuilt store opened in Maynooth in 2000. Some older stores continued to trade under the former names until the early 2000s.
In October 2000, Tesco Ireland launched its tesco.ie online shopping service for the Dublin area. Essentially an Irish expansion of the tesco.com service offered in the UK, the service expanded until by 2004 it was available nationwide. In 2001, Maurice Pratt, who had been the public face of Quinnsworth, left the company to become chief executive of C&C, later taking up a post as chairman of Bank of Scotland (Ireland). He was replaced by Gordon Fryett.
Recently, Tesco Ireland has been slowly rebranding its stores as simply "Tesco", using the regular red-on-white Tesco logo. It now appears that the Tesco Ireland logo will be phased out completely from shop fronts, though it is still used for print advertising - it has, however been reverted to the red-on-white colour scheme.
The company opened its first Irish "Tesco Extra" hypermarket at the Clare Hall estate in Coolock, north Dublin in 2004, and has also branched into filling stations, featuring low petrol prices. Many stores are now also open 24 hours. The company has also moved into the convenience store market, with the first a converted Quinnsworth (then the smallest store in the chain) in Drumcondra, opened as a "Tesco Local". This was the only store to use this brand, as subsequent new convenience stores use the "Tesco Express" brand instead.
Tesco has also expanded its product range in Ireland. The Tesco Extra hypermarkets, as well as larger Tesco stores, now stock a range of clothing, electrical goods, music, DVDs and video games, as well as newspapers, magazines, and toys.
Criticisms
Tesco Ireland is the largest food retailer in Ireland, and has over 10,000 employees. Tesco Ireland has come in for increased criticism for apparently high prices in its Irish stores, although in its favour this seems to be because comparisons are with the British Tesco stores rather than other Irish retailers - and thus like is not being compared with like. However, there have been general criticisms of the similar pricing between Irish supermarkets, and economic reports noting the high prices in Ireland generally. Research from Forfas, concluded that only a five per cent difference in the cost of goods between North and South was justifiable.The findings highlighted retailers' larger margins in the South vis a vis their operations in the North and the Minister for Enterprise queried why the price differential in many identical goods was substantially in excess of 5%.
Speaking to business leaders in Belfast, Tesco plc CEO argued that higher prices in Northern Ireland were due to higher energy costs and the cost of transporting goods from Great Britain. Though this doesn't explain the large disparities in pricing when goods are moved by truck between the Derry (UK) branches and Letterkenny (Ireland) branches for example.
A report by the independent retailers group RGDATA contained allegations that Tesco overcharged customers. The report shows that customers in six Tesco stores were overcharged by an average of 3% on some items.
Tesco Ireland was convicted of failing to display prices properly by the National Consumer Agency in July 2008.
Tesco Ireland Re-Brand
In 2007, Tesco Ireland announced that they would be re-branding the company with enrolement of brand new uniforms to take over from the ten year old previous uniforms. The new brand includes brand new Dell Computers for File Maintanance Control rooms and floor staff workstations. Included in the major re-brand is "Cash-Savers" a low cost product range designed to bring new competition for Irish consumers.
In 2009, the Tesco Local store in Druncondra was re-branded as just Tesco.
Tesco Mobile (Ireland)
On 26 October 2007 Tesco Ireland announced that 'An extensive range of Tesco Mobile prepay handsets will be rolled out to 48 Tesco stores from Monday 29 October'. Tesco Mobile launched as a MVNO piggy-backing on the O2 Network in Ireland. They have also outsourced the running of Tesco Mobile to Fujitsu Ireland. The network uses the 089 prefix.
See also
External links
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