As coronavirus takes its toll on economies and businesses across the globe, Retail Week brings you regular dispatches from international retailers and experts, who provide their insights into how they are coping with the pandemic.
In today’s dispatch, Tobias Wasmiht, managing director of Spar International, reveals how the grocer has been adopting a marketplace model to help it tackle the health emergency and discusses the changes in shopping habits it is seeing around the world, from China to Italy.
This article first appeared in issue two of World Retail Congress’ The Retail World 2020: Retailing in a time of crisis reports.
The escalation of the Covid-19 outbreak is being felt by Spar country operations in the 48 markets we trade in worldwide.
A key Spar strength is this global network, and, during this crisis, we have been able to quickly learn from Spar markets that were first to face the outbreak, such as China and Italy.
Practical and decisive information has been rapidly shared via our central international Spar online resource centre. This ‘early warning’ resource has allowed our country teams to prepare and scale-up their mitigation strategies.
The number-one priority has been to protect the health of our people and the communities we serve. To that effect, we implemented the issuance of full PPE to our colleagues, including face masks, gloves, and face shields, installed plexiglass screens in stores to protect colleagues and customers, and undertook precautionary disinfecting of stores. In the most affected regions, store-wide deep cleaning is being carried out multiple times a day.
In Italy, Spar moved quickly to purchase supplementary health insurance for our employees which, in addition to the provision of PPE, has given our teams greater confidence in undertaking their vital role in contact with customers.
The international procurement of essential protective clothing, such as disposable face masks and gloves, is becoming increasingly vital as a growing number of countries adopt mandatory regulations of wearing masks and gloves for everyone in our stores. Within the past eight weeks, Spar International has procured, on behalf of our European operations, over 9.5 million disposable face masks and 10.2 million gloves for our stores.
Our Spar China colleagues and our strong presence in China have been invaluable in this process, with Spar employees visiting the PPE factories producing for us to supervise production and ensure that much-needed PPE is airfreighted as quickly as possible to where it is needed most.
As measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus cascade, Spar International supports our partners through the analysis of sales data to identify trends in markets that have entered into lockdown at an earlier phase and the impact this has had on the sales patterns and supply chains of key categories.
“Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, Spar had online grocery platforms in 12 countries. Within only four weeks, this has almost doubled”
For example, learnings from a panel of clustered Spar countries are used to help forecast the waves of demand and changes in buying behaviour post-lockdown on a weekly basis.
Across Europe, Spar country teams have reported challenges in procuring grocery items such as pasta, tomato products, and other tinned goods. Spar International has adopted a marketplace approach of utilising our strong global sourcing network to purchase from both own-brand and A-brand suppliers.
The bitter reality of the Covid-19 outbreak has seen the best-laid category plans uprooted and replaced with traditional trading, where speed and agility outweigh perfection and detailed planning.
A further development enforced by lockdowns, curfews and additional legislation has been the impact of restrictive trading hours and the part closure of certain outlets. Spar in Italy has taken the voluntary step to close on Sundays to provide an opportunity to store colleagues to recover. It is interesting to note that these sales have now spread over the remaining six days, as customers have revised their shopping patterns.
Elsewhere, Spar city-centre convenience stores and forecourts have been negatively impacted. To circumvent sales declines, a strong focus has been placed on offering alternative solutions. This move to facilitate online orders combined with home delivery or click-and-collect continues to gather pace across Spar.
Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, Spar had online grocery platforms in 12 countries. Within only four weeks, this has almost doubled. There has been a series of innovative solutions developed and adopted by Spar country operations including online/click-and-collect and drive-in pick-up solutions from forecourts, WhatsApp orders, home delivery via shop-for-a-friend apps, as well as the creation of essential grocery boxes/care hampers for home delivery to those most in need.
As we look to the future, we can be sure that there shall be no such thing as returning to normality, only the redefinition of what the ‘new normal’ shall be. Customer behaviour has changed – not only during this crisis but in the long term. Health and hygiene are firmly placed as being of utmost importance. Social distancing is becoming the norm and we seek to serve our customers in a fast, efficient and safe manner. The economic uncertainty and financial insecurity for many are placing ever-growing importance on low prices, offering consistent and long-term value.
The Covid-19 crisis is challenging us all in the grocery sector to fundamentally review our strategies and models. A new form of transformation is ongoing and at pace. At Spar, we have in the last eight weeks seen an unprecedented amount of innovation and coming together of the worldwide organisation, which fills me with confidence and the unwavering belief that we shall come out of this crisis stronger and better together.
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