Mace (store)
The Republic of Ireland variant logo
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| Convenience store | |
| Founded | 1960 in Ireland |
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Area served
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Mace is a convenience store symbol group operating as three separate entities with different ownership in Great Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland. The stores are independently owned and join the groups, paying a fee for marketing and branding support and purchasing their stock from the brand owners.
The Mace brand has had several owners in its history in Great Britain. Palmer and Harvey acquired the entire rights to Mace throughout Great Britain in 2005, finally unifying the brand under one owner. This stability has allowed the brand to recover from defections by retailers caused by frequent disruptive changes of ownership of the brand in the past.
In May 2005, P&H acquired the franchise for Mace in Scotland from Somerfield, previously operated by Aberness Foods until March 2004. Because the brand had three owners in such a short space of time, Mace retailers had experienced considerable disruption. Since the Somerfield takeover Mace "had been haemorrhaging independent retailers to other symbols since it bought Mace from Aberness". 25 stores defected to Spar during the takeover by P&H from Somerfield.
In 1999, P&H acquired Booker Wholesale Foods from Booker plc, giving P&H control of the Mace symbol group in England and Wales. A large number of retailers were unhappy with the change and 80 stores left soon after the takeover. Initially they were unable to satisfy customer expectations with one stating "I don't think they're geared up to serve our type of trade. They're more used to being 'a supplier', rather than 'the supplier'."
In Northern Ireland the brand is owned by Musgrave Retail Partners. They bought the brand when they purchased JJ Haslett in 2007. JJ Haslett had been an independent wholesaler since an MBO from BWG Foods in 2003.
There are approximately 200 Mace stores in Northern Ireland, some trading as Mace Express. Musgrave also own the Centra and Supervalu brands.
Mace has traded in Ireland since 1960 and is Ireland's oldest franchise convenience store. In the beginning there were over a dozen wholesalers operating the brand.
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Wikipedia