The story of Park ‘n’ Shop started back in 1988, when almost all other retailers were closing down in Nigeria. They began with the opening of a basic 120m2 Grocery store with few cold store units offering a variety of frozen goods, cheese, wine & spirits along with packaged food and non-food items. In the following years, new stores were opened across cities, which were much bigger than the first with the focus on increasing the assortment and introducing categories never seen before in Nigeria. Within a matter of years, Park ‘n’ Shop started operating in the hypermarket store format offering products ranging from Bread to Bed.
Artee Group, the owners of Park ‘n’ Shop, took a significant step in 2010 when it decided to join hands with SPAR International and secured the master license for Nigerian operations. Since then, all the new stores were launched under the SPAR banner. Gradually, existing Park ‘n’ Shop stores were revamped and upgraded as per SPAR standard.
With a wide variety of product offerings in Grocery, Bakery, Butchery, Fruits & Vegetables, Hot Meals, Wine & Spirits, FMCG, Health & Beauty, Consumer Electronics, Large and Small Home Appliances, Mobile Phones, Laptops & Tablets, Perfumes, Watches & Jewellery, Furniture, SPAR Hypermarket stores cuts across all socio-economic groups in Nigeria and offers the largest assortment in Nigeria.
SPAR has over 33,000m2 of retail space with 10 stores spreading across 4 cities of Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt and Calabar in Nigeria and employees over 2,000 people.
Retail innovation has been one of the key driving factors for SPAR’s growth in Nigeria. SPAR is the first retail store chain to introduce co-branded Credit Card and Plastic Gift Cards. In 2014, SPAR became the first chain to introduce a Loyalty Program under the SPAR Reward Card brand name for its shoppers. Today, SPAR Reward Card boasts of over 300,000 members.
SPAR believes in the Nigerian dream and have aligned their business practices to the larger objective of being a premier catalyst in Nigeria’s growth story. Working towards this end, SPAR has ushered positive socio-economic changes in communities to help the Nigerian dream fly high. This approach remains embedded in their ethos even as they rapidly expand their footprints deeper into Nigeria.