GROCERS CO-OPERATE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 944, 10 April 1930, Page 13

GROCERS CO-OPERATE

NEW BUSINESS MOVE IN AUCKLAND COMING OF FOUR-SQUARE STORES Today marks the launching of a campaign signalising a new development in the provision business in Auckland—the group operations of a large number of retail grocery businesses under the style of Four Square Stores. The owners of the “Four Square Stores” are all members of the Auckland Master Grocers’ Assoeiation. which is- affiliated with the New Zealand Master Grocers’ Federation, with whose objects the public is certain to be in full agreement. That organisation aims to promote, protect and raise the standard of the retail grocery trade in New Zealand and to unite retailers in the cause of honest and fair trading. It stands to protect the trade and customers against unfair legislation and to encourage commercial education in order that business may be conducted efficiently and the maximum service rendered to the public. Commenting upon the evidence of the world-wide spread of the “chain store” movement, a representative of the Four Square Stores said that in the United States and Canada, particularly, there were many of these corporations. One result of the formation of these huge combines, he said, was the gradual getting, together of the smaller retail distributors with a view to co-oper-ative buying. There was no questioning the fact that the latter group of buyers had a distinct advantage over the “chain store” corporations, because the businesses were individually owned and possessed a distinctive personality. The natural sequence to combined buying was combined selling. For some time past a large group of retail businesses has been functioning on these lines in Christchurch, and in The Sun today is an advertisement announcing the coming of the “Four Square Stores. These stores have combined their buying resources, but retain the personal service only possible with privately owned and controlled businesses. “It will be a sorry day for the community if the small shopkeeper is forced out of business,” said the same gentleman, “and, with increasing unemployment in our midst, there is much to commend the combination of individually owned stores, which seek to render the best possible service, and which will retain any profits they may make for the advancement of our own immediate neighbourhood.”