It was a milestone in the history of Spar when ten wholesale companies merged into “Spar Warenhandels AG” in 1970. Since then, the Drexel (Vorarlberg), Reisch (Tyrol) and Poppmeier (Styria) families have been the group’s three largest owners. This will not change if Gerhard Drexel (64) leaves his chair as CEO at the end of 2020 after 20 years. His designated successor Fritz Poppmeier also comes from a family of Spar founders. Marcus Wild from Linz has joined the board. Even his father Siegfried once shaped the modern retail landscape as a savings dealer in Steyr.
It is said from the management floor that the bosses always have to come from the founding families. But the path is quite successful: Spar has overtaken its main competitor Rewe (Billa, Merkur and Penny) and, with a share of 35 percent recently, has taken the market leadership in domestic food retailing. In 2019 Spar in Austria employed 45,700 people in its grocery chains alone and had more than 1,500 locations of the Spar, Eurospar, Interspar and Maximarkt brands.
The ownership structure
It is noteworthy that today Spar is the only chain of food retailers operating in Austria that is owned by Austria. All ten founding families (including the Wild families from Steyr and Philipp from Wels) continue to hold shares in the group. In total, they hold 93 percent.
The idea imported
The saving idea itself was “imported” from the Netherlands back in 1954. Small food retailers suddenly had a consistent brand that was supposed to signal reliability to consumers. The “consumption” that dominated the market thus had an opponent. The difference: The consumer cooperative was only active in larger towns, Spar also had many village merchants as partners and offered them bulk purchases from a single source with corresponding cost advantages. In 1970, the merger to the AG followed primarily at the instigation of Hans Reisch – see above. A descendant of Reisch, Hans K. Reisch (59), will also become deputy boss at the beginning of the year. In addition to Marcus Wild (57), Markus Kaser (48) and Paul Klotz (54) move up to the board. As Spar wants to align itself even more strongly as a Central European retail group, “in the future there will be five instead of four directors on the group board,” the retail company says. The Linz Wild was previously head of the Spar shopping center subsidiary SES and will in future be responsible for SES, real estate, the sports retail company Hervis and business process management on the board. (much)
The Spar Group
With 45,700 employees, Spar Austria is the largest private domestic employer. The annual turnover of 7.2 billion euros in 2019 represented growth of 4.7 percent compared to the previous year. With a market share of 35 percent recently, Spar is the number one in the country.
With the neighboring countries of Northeast Italy, Slovenia, Hungary and Croatia, the Spar Austria Group (Spar, Eurospar, Interspar, Maximarkt, Hervis, Spar European Shopping Centers) employs around 85,000 people.
