Newspaper Page Text
US supermarkets
NEW YORK (UPI) —The biggest discount store-super
market combinations in the United States are pygmies
compared with a revolutionary new type store in Europe
called the “hypermarche,” an American merchandising
consultant says.
Furthermore, said Paul Halstead of New Rochelle,
N.Y., whose 50-man organization helped create the new
European mass merchandising concept, the hypermarche
will cross the Atlantic within two years and have an
enormous impact on retailing in America.
“Some hypermarches have a sales volume under a
single roof of S4O million a year compared with perhaps
sls million for about the largest discount store operations
we have in America today,” Halstead said.
He said the Supermarket Institute, the National Retail
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pygmies compared to new type in Europe
Merchants Association and large individual American re
tailing chains have sent delegations to Europe in the past
year to study the hypermarche. His own organization has
projects under way to design hypermarches for the United
States.
The hypermarche, pronounced ee-pair-mar-shay, can
be a valuable tool in fighting inflation, Halstead said.
It could reverse a noticeable American retailing trend
to maximize price markups in order to offset the
inflationary rise in costs, he said. The maximized
markups often have not produced higher profits. The A. &
P. stores have sought to reverse the trend with their WEO
program, but this produced a s4l million loss for A. & P. in
the first half of this year.
The hypermarche, which first appeared in France and
Belgium, is a radically new retailing concept, Halstead
said. It combines everything under one roof and one
ownership —no leased departments, no separate checkout
counters for anything, and the merchandise is not
displayed in the conventional supermarket or discount
store manner. Bulk shipping containers of goods are
simply dumped on the floors or shelves with the price on
the bulk carton only.
The markups are lower than the lowest discount store
practice in the United States. This and the fact that the
store carries everything, dry goods, foods, hardware, etc.,
under a single ownership and management, everything is
self-service, and the store is large, are the basic
characteristics of the hypermarche, Halstead said.
Like the American discount store, the hypermarche is
Page 27
Griffin Daily News Wednesday, October 25, 1972
usually in a shopping center of sorts, but it is too
overpowering to be hospitable to direct local competition.
Other enterprises in the center, some owned by the
hypermarche company, may be a gas station and auto
center, a cafeteria, a garden center and possibly an
independent furniture store.
Halstead, who helped design Europe’s first American
style supermarket at Cologne, Germany, in 1957, said
there are about 1,000 shopping centers and 7,000
supermarkets in western Europe. His organization
designed about 400.
“With the hypermarche, I think the Europeans have
jumped 10 years or more ahead of us in mass retailing
techniques. They also have definitely found an important
way to combat inflation,” Halstead said.