The Supermarket Online

The Supermarket Online is a national brand consisting of 10 niche retail websites, including those for Paper shredders, safes, printer ink, and paper, which is supported by a network of regional Franchising who fulfil the deliveries in their local area. The company aim is to provide the value for money of a large corporate business with the personal service of a local store. This is the first business of its kind in the UK
History
The Supermarket Online is part of the Superstat Group. Superstat is a buying group catering for the needs of small to medium sized, owner managed office product dealers in the UK. The business model was devised in 2008 by Ivan Dunn, Chairman of Superstat and Chris Collinson, Managing Director, who were looking for further ways for office product dealers to compete against corporate retail bodies with much larger buying power. Two factors led Superstat to identify this opportunity in the market, firstly they were aware of the expense involved for each of their dealers to follow current business advice and optimise themselves for an online market. Secondly, if each of their dealers followed the same advice, there would be 200 companies all effectively competing against each other to get to the top of Google. Superstat also looked at the strategy of large online retailers, cornering a large percentage of the online market making it difficult for smaller dealers to compete. The group felt the weaknesses large players fall victim to, such as limitations of third party delivery and poor customer service are areas their dealers could provide exceptionally well.
Current operation
The Supermarket Online currently own ten branded domains for each of their niche websites which launched in October 2009. The franchise is backed by a cumulative advertising spend of £1.2m per year combined with a specialist Search engine optimization team. There are 80 territories in total covering every area of the UK, giving national coverage by its member dealers.
Market size and projections
The UK office products market was valued at £1.55 billion in 2008. Superstat forecasts The Supermarket Online will have an annual turnover of £50m by 2012.

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