The SPAR Scotland annual tradeshow and conference, held in Aviemore on September 26th, 2024, saw more than 800 attendees including over 200 suppliers come together and highlight the ingenuity and adaptability of the Scottish convenience retail sector over the past year.

The event brought together store colleagues, industry leaders, suppliers, and colleagues from SPAR across the UK and internationally. This year’s conference offered delegates insight into successes of the last 12 months including retail technological innovations, best practices, store acquisitions and investments and the delivery emerging trends in SPAR Branded stores.

The event also included the SPAR Scotland Awards, which recognised stores, retailers and individuals for exceptional achievements throughout the year.

Investing now and into the future

Throughout 2024, SPAR Scotland has solidified its position as it looks toward the future and the retail organisations journey to serving the Scottish market with the best that the SPAR Brand has to offer. This includes expansion through the acquisiation of new stores and the modernisation of existing sites to improve the customer shopping experience.

Investment has also been made into a fleet of vehicles, equipment, and systems and processes. SPAR Prefeered Supplier, Relex Solutions, is delivering integrated store and distribution centre forecasting and replenishment as well as providing improved allocations, promotional estimating, order accuracy and forecast sharing.

SPAR Scotland also continues to invest in a programme of marketing, advertising, and digital campaigns. So far this year activities have included big TV budget advertising on STV, a huge digital campaign Win with Every Goal with fellow SPAR distributer James Hall & Co, and an ongoing high-profile partnership with the Scottish FA.

SPAR Scotland CEO Colin McLean said: “These initiatives have awarded us with a number of highly acclaimed industry awards, which we are proud of, but as we move into 2025, we do so with cautious optimism. SPAR has proven repeatedly that we can overcome challenges: through collaboration, innovation, and strategic planning, to ensure continued success and growth. We aim to reinforce that spirit and look forward to what the future holds.”

Giving back locally

Being ingrained in local communities, support for local charities and groups is incredibly important to SPAR Scotland. Over the last 12 months, £165,957 has been donated to a substantial number of local charities, schools, groups, and organisations around the country. The tradeshow also saw SPAR UK’s national charity partner Marie Curie and industry charity GroceryAid receive a donation of £3,000 each.

Paula Middleton, Head of Marketing for CJ Lang & Son Ltd, added; “Giving back to charities and groups across Scotland is what we do and Aviemore is no exception. We have made Aviemore our tradeshow home and we wanted to be able to support two local organisations with this donation.”

Source: CJ Lang & Son Ltd.

Read more about SPAR UK

About SPAR UK

The United Kingdom became a SPAR member in 1956 when SPAR International granted a licence to utilise the SPAR brand to a group of independent wholesalers. There are five regional organisations in the UK, continually building the brand’s presence. A central office in London provides national marketing and buying services for the group. SPAR in the UK comprises independently owned and licensed retailers as well as company-owned stores.