‘Keep the shops well lit,’ the last words of the man who founded store in 1869
ONE has a Victorian legacy, the other was founded in the 1960s, but both chains at the centre of this supermarket mega-merger had humble beginnings.
It was in 1869 that John James Sainsbury and his wife Mary Ann opened a dairy shop on Drury Lane in London.
Legend has it that the couple first opened its doors on April 20, the day they got married.
The man who gave the company its official name, J Sainsbury, died in 1928, when there were 128 shops. ‘Keep the shops well lit,’ were said to be his last words.
The company pioneered selfservice in the 1950s and 1960s.
This may even have been an inspiration to two Yorkshire butcher’s sons who created Asda in 1965 when they merged their Queen’s supermarket chain with a local dairy farming enterprise called Associated Dairies.
The name Asda is a combination of the first two letters of the brothers’ surname, Asquith, and the first two letters of Dairies.
Asda grew rapidly across the North in the 1970s, with the slogan ‘That’s Asda Price’. Times got harder in the 1980s, as the Leedsbased group had spread itself too thinly after buying Allied Carpets and furniture business MFI, both of which were subsequently sold.
Archie Norman, who is now chairman of Marks & Spencer, took over as chief executive of Asda in the early 1990s and restored it as a major force in retailing, boosted by the popularity of the bestselling George clothing brand.
Asda was also a management training ground for Justin King and Mike Coupe, who both went on to run Sainsbury’s.
Asda was bought by US giant Walmart in 1999 for £6.7 billion.
Sainsbury’s had floated on the stock market in 1973. But it struggled in the 1990s, under the leadership of David Sainsbury.
Its turnaround was led by Justin King, who was in charge for ten years until 2014.
The family has retained a stake but is not involved in management. Qatari investors are now the biggest shareholders, owning just under a quarter of the business.