The Courier-Journal - January 18, 2000
Stiff competition for the East End discount dollar has created its first major casualty. The bigg’s Hypermarket at 12975 Shelbyville Road will close April 1.
The closing, announced to employees yesterday, “was a business decision based on economics,” said Rita Simmer, spokeswoman for bigg’s parent, Supervalu Inc. of Minneapolis.
“Despite the hard work of store associates, economic pressures and store performance have affected the viability of the store long term,” Simmer said, adding that the bigg’s grocery on Ind. 131 in Clarksville will remain open.
Simmer would not comment on specific sales performance, but the Shelby Report, which tracks grocery sales in the U.S. Southeast, showed bigg’s losing ground in the Louisville market.
Grocery sales at the two bigg’s stores lost more than a full percent of market share in the year ending December 1999, dropping into fifth place behind Wal-Mart with a 5.3 percent share.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the Shelbyville Road store was losing money, said Chuck Gilmer, editor of the Shelby Report, but it may have shown bigg’s management how far it had to go to be competitive with discounters like Wal-Mart and Meijer.
“Meijer has shown a commitment to grow in that market, as well as Wal-Mart,” Gilmer said. “Bigg’s probably did make an economic decision that it would take too much (investment) to compete there. Sometimes it comes down to where you want to fight. Are the resources going to be best used in this market or another market?”
Supervalu will try to place some the Shelbyville Road store’s 140 full- and part-time employees at the Clarksville store, Simmer said, and will work with others to find job placements.
The Hypermarket, which combines a grocery store with discount clothing, electronics, housewares and other goods, was unique to the area when it opened in 1990. But since then Wal-Mart and Meijer have located supercenters nearby at the interchange of Westport Road and the Snyder Freeway, while grocers Kroger and Winn-Dixie have built or upgraded stores, adding pharmacies, banking and other services.
Louisville is one of the few markets where Meijer, growing out of Michigan, and Southern-based Wal-Mart have come into head-to-head competition. “Louisville is a very competitive market, and everyone just fights to hold their market share,” said Pat Hicks, president of the Kentucky Grocers’ Association. “It’s a shopper’s market right now.”