How retail changed my life: Sainsbury’s Ziggie Singh – becoming a somebody

For his father, an immigrant who moved from India to Kent before Singh was born, a job in food retail did not exactly represent the “chosen” career.

“My brothers were in college and university, and that was the chosen path really,” Singh explains. “The thinking was that you needed to do academically a lot better than just finish school in order to succeed.” 

But after more than 30 years in food retail – and no college or university qualifications to his name – Sainsbury’s head of stores for northwest London Singh is living, breathing proof of how the industry offers opportunity and champions talent from all walks of life.

However, Singh’s progression from those teenage years working as a part-time shop assistant in Gateway to taking on responsibility for more than 70 Sainsbury’s stores in the capital city has been far from straightforward.

His school days, and the early part of his working life, were fraught with what Singh diplomatically refers to as “challenges”. 

When Singh’s father and grandfather emigrated to the UK, they chose to base themselves in Chatham, an unusual move at the time. Most immigrants opted to move to the North of England, where many factories were based, in order to secure work. But such factories would insist that all staff remove their turbans for safety reasons – and Singh’s grandfather “was determined he wasn’t going to cut his hair and keep his turban”. Instead, he got a job at Chatham dockyard and set up the family home there. 

Kent, as Singh recalls, was “a predominantly white area” at the time and racism was “pretty rife”. Upbury Manor, the Gillingham school Singh attended, had more than 1,000 pupils but just seven of them came from non-white backgrounds.    

“They were difficult times, but they put you in a good position later on in life because you have experienced those challenges at a young age. It positions you and builds you as an individual”

Fellow pupils and teachers struggled to pronounce Singh’s real name. Instead of Harsimran, they started calling him Ziggie – a reference to the Grange Hill character from Liverpool, the football team Singh supported.   

“Because you have a different name or you look different to everyone else in school, building resilience was hugely important,” Singh tells Retail Week.

“You had to be strong in mind because every day at school was going to be a challenge based on racism and what was going to come at you. 

“They were difficult times, but they put you in a good position later on in life because you have experienced those challenges at a young age. It positions you and builds you as an individual.”

Starting off in retail

Singh took his first steps into retail when he was still at school, after landing a part-time role working weekends at his local Gateway store. It was there that he saw first-hand the role retail plays as an enabler of social mobility and the importance of having a sponsor actively supporting your career development.  

In Singh’s case, that was Alan Ritchie, the manager of the Gateway store at the time he joined as a teenager. Under Ritchie’s guidance, the role quickly transformed from “a part-time job that brought money into the family pot and supported my parents before I went to college” into something Singh wanted to do longer term. 

By the age of just 16 and a half, Singh was a twilight manager and was in charge of a number of his school peers. 

“One of the things I think was instilled by my parents is that you didn’t go to work and muck about. Anything you did, you gave it your best. I think Alan saw that,” Singh says. 

“He could see I enjoyed doing what I did and he was happy to help me progress because he knew I was going to do a good job for him. 

“One of the things I think was instilled by my parents is that you didn’t go to work and muck about. Anything you did, you gave it your best”

“That relationship started as a professional one because I worked hard and I had potential in the role, but it has become a friendship and I still go to him for advice.” 

Gateway would later rebrand as Somerfield, for whom Singh became a store manager at the age of 19. He ended up running its Kingston shop, which was later bought by Asda.

The supermarket giant operated around 220 branches at that time, but Singh was the only non-white store manager in the business – something that presented further issues for a young man looking to progress in his career. 

“Walking into a room with a turban on and looking different was tough,” Singh recalls. “You sensed that people would tend to have a conversation elsewhere rather than invite you into one. That was the hardest thing – trying to get into a social conversation. 

“Coming from an Asian background and being in that environment, you were learning how to socially behave. The after-work drinks and the after-work socialising, culturally, that was a big challenge and probably the biggest learning I had while that transition to Asda took place.”

Moving on to Sainsbury’s

Singh eventually moved to Sainsbury’s in 2006, initially as a store manager. He later became convenience area manager for southwest London and then southeast London, before taking on a central role as retail excellence manager at Sainsbury’s Holborn office in 2012.

Although Singh enjoyed his two years in the grocer’s HQ, he admits he missed having direct reports that he could take under his wing.

His experiences working for Ritchie and being a beneficiary of social mobility have stuck with him. Now he wants to use his position to offer others the sorts of opportunities he was given at a young age.

“There are loads of people I have sponsored now because I know that having that sponsor who really believes in you as a person is huge. Having that at a young age is probably the reason I am where I am today,” Singh says. 

“In retail, especially in the food industry, you can be a nobody and become a somebody”

“Sometimes you take someone on or you meet someone and everyone’s written them off for various reasons. To me, that becomes more of a challenge to see what you can achieve with a person. 

“The easiest thing is to go and buy in talent and hire the best that’s out there. But in any teams I’ve had, I’ve always wanted a mixture of raw talent, experienced talent and talent that you’ve grown yourself – that gives the team better dynamics than just having a team full of proven winners. 

“I haven’t got a degree. But in retail, especially in the food industry, you can be a nobody and become a somebody. I’m not sure if there are many industries you can do that in without having gone to college or gotten a degree. That’s unique and very special to retail.”