The man driving Aldi’s remarkable growth
Aldi may have seen its UK profits drop last year, but shoppers spent an extra £1bn there compared with 2016. We meet the man driving the discount supermarket’s rapid growth.
Aldi doesn’t sell a very wide range of products so the bar is set high for any new one to make it to the shelves.
It’s the UK chief executive Matthew Barnes who does the final test in the sleek tasting kitchens at its Atherstone HQ. He not only personally approves every new product, but sets the price for it, too.
This forensic approach appears to be working.
Last year sales rose 13.5%. It’s the sort of growth that the big established players can only dream of these days.
Right now, it’s opening more than one store a week with the aim of having a thousand stores by 2022.
And often in places which already have one Aldi, or sometimes even more.
Take Glascote, in Tamworth, Staffordshire, just down the road from its Warwickshire HQ.
There’s an Aldi close to the station but the company recently opened a new one just a couple of miles away.
Says Mr Barnes: “Our first store has been there for more than ten years and was really over-trading. It was really, really busy and we couldn’t expand that store. So, we opened this store down the road.
Meanwhile, sales at the first store have dropped a small amount. But, overall sales in Tamworth are up more than 80% and that’s absolutely the right thing on every level for us to do.
“More and more customers are doing their main shop in Aldi. It gives us the confidence to invest in the UK because the potential for growth is fantastic,” he adds.
Click here to read more (Source: BBC News)