This time, we have landed in the 20th century. Tesco, as we know it today, started way back in Like most supermarkets, it all started from a market stall in London Town. Tesco started in , when Jack Cohen started selling surplus groceries from a market stall in Hackney. Jack's market stall grew, and by , the first Tesco store opened in Burnt Oak, Edgware. The store focused on dry goods, including the Tesco branded tea!
During the next 10 years, the business continued to grow, with Jack opening stores in expanding London Suburbs. In , Tesco purchased a plot of land in Edmonton to allow him to build state of the art headquarters and warehousing. It was one of the first modern warehouses built for food, and introduced breakthrough ideas for stock control. The Tesco stock was offered for sale at 25p per share.
This flotation jump-started Tesco's journey into self-service stores, with its first supermarket arriving a few years later. In , the first big step was taken, which began the transformation into the retailer we know today. Tesco opened its first self-service store. Jack had travelled to America to research self-service stores.
Tesco was changing the way it served its customer. In traditional stores, customers would form a line at a counter and a store assistant would gather the shopping from the back of the store.
Self-service allowed customers to walk round the store, picking their own shopping from the shelves. By he had started selling his first own-brand product, tea. Looking for a name he took the first three letters of his supplier, TE Stockwell, and combined them with the first two letters of his own.
Tesco was born and the first shop was opened in in north London. Cohen believed in the business model "stack 'em high, sell 'em low".
It earned him the nickname "slasher Jack". He totally understood what worked for the mass market. In the recession at the start of the s Tesco quickly realised shoppers wanted their money to go further. The company launched its Value range in By Tesco's sales in the UK had jumped ahead of Sainsbury's.
The size of the company's orders allowed them to negotiate bargains with even the biggest manufacturers. As this power grew the relationship between all the big supermarkets and their suppliers came under scrutiny.
In the Competition Commission carried out a major inquiry into the issue which lead to the creation of a Code of Practice. It's an issue that rumbles on, with dairy farmers protesting last year about the low price some supermarkets pay for milk.
Tesco says it negotiates the best prices on behalf of customers but that it is also fair and that suppliers stay with the company. It says it pays one of the highest prices for milk out of all the main supermarkets.
But what really took Tesco to the top was watching customer behaviour. It was the first British supermarket to do so and it was a game-changing move. The introduction of the Tesco Clubcard is the single most significant factor in the success of the company, says Sir Terry Leahy, the supermarket's chief executive from to The idea of a loyalty scheme was not new.
The savvy Cohen had been an early adopter of Green Shield Stamps in and successfully exploited the incentive scheme to his advantage. But the Clubcard was a loyalty scheme for the age of computerised research.
There's certainly room for a challenger, disruptive brand - but the cost of entry is so high, it takes a company with pockets as deep as Tesco's to be able to play. Home » Our insights » Blog » Tesco closes its comparison site 28 August Tesco closes its comparison site. Without spending millions of pounds on advertising, it was always going to be tough for it to get traction. About the author.
James Daley has been a consumer campaigner and financial journalist for the past 15 years. Supermarket giant Tesco is set to launch a voucher-at-till price matching initiative as it seeks to offer everyday items at a cheaper rate than competitors, it has been reported today.
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