[BITList] Alan Sainsbury, self-service pioneer

[John Feltham]

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Sainsbury,  Alan John, Baron Sainsbury  (1902-1998), food retailer and supporter of consumer rights, was born at 14 Avenue Road, Crouch End, London, on 13 August 1902, the elder son of John Benjamin Sainsbury  (1871-1956) [see under Sainsbury family  (per. 1869-1956)] and his wife, Mabel Miriam, nee Van den Bergh (1876-1941). His younger brother was Sir Robert James Sainsbury  (1906-2000). He was the eldest grandson of the founders of the family food-retailing business. He was educated at Haileybury College, after which he spent a period working in a mission in the East End of London. He joined the family firm in 1921, at the age of eighteen, as he later put it, 'chiefly because my mother said it would break my father's heart if I didn't'. He proved an instinctive retailer, however, and throughout his career demonstrated a profound sense of responsibility to the family business, its customers, and employees. He was known in the business as Mr Alan according to the custom of identifying family members by their Christian names or initials.

When Mr Alan joined Sainsbury's, it was a partnership owned by his father and grandfather. J. Sainsbury Ltd was formed as a private limited company in 1922, but share ownership remained restricted by the company's articles of association to lineal descendants of the founders and their spouses. His first job was with his uncles Arthur and Alfred, fourth and fifth sons of the founders, buying dairy produce for the shops, but he soon asked to be transferred to the retail side of the business. He worked incognito behind the counter of the shop at Boscombe under the alias 'Mr Allan' and although the experience was cut short when he was recognized by a family friend, it inspired him to continue with the firm. He returned to Sainsbury's Blackfriars headquarters and after a secondment with Buisman's, a butter supplier based at Leeuwarden in Holland, began to take increasing responsibility for buying and later for the retailing side of the business.

On 31 October 1925 Sainsbury married Doreen Davan Adams (1904-1985), with whom he had three sons: John (b. 1927), Simon Sainsbury, and Timothy (b. 1932), all of whom later took prominent roles in the family business. This marriage was dissolved in 1939. He married again on 12 September 1944; his second wife was Anne Elizabeth Lewy (1916-1988), with whom he had a daughter, Paulette (b. 1946). Between the wars Sainsbury began to take an active role in politics, his early interest in social issues fuelled by concern about the widespread unemployment and poverty of the period. He stood as Liberal candidate for Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1929, 1931, and 1935, but the increasing responsibilities of his business career led him to set aside his political ambitions to concentrate on the family firm. Between 1920 and 1939 Sainsbury's grew from a regional chain of 129 shops with annual sales of £5 million to become one of Britain's more important multiples, with 255 shops and sales of £12.6 million. Alan Sainsbury was as demanding as his father in pursuit of 'Sainsbury standards' of quality and service with a 'hands on' style which ensured that the family's centralized management was undiminished as the business grew.

Sainsbury's father's sudden and unexpected retirement in 1938 due to a heart attack led to the immediate transfer of executive control to the third generation of the family. John Benjamin retained the title of chairman until his death in 1956, but Alan and his younger brother, Robert, took on the management of the business. They became joint general managers, with Alan taking responsibility for trading matters and Robert for personnel, administration, and finance.

The brothers had barely a year before the Second World War presented them with huge challenges. The introduction of rationing from January 1940 affected Sainsbury's trade particularly badly because the high-quality fresh foods in which the firm specialized were in short supply and were very strictly rationed. In real terms turnover halved between 1939 and 1943. The location of the firm's trading heartland in London and the south-east also made it vulnerable to loss of trade because many residents left the region.

Despite these challenges Alan regarded the conduct of the business during wartime as a national duty, an attitude which drew him into more public forms of service. Before the war he had begun to advise the government on the emergency distribution of foodstuffs; once war was declared, he became increasingly involved in public service. He was recruited onto several Ministry of Food committees as chief representative of the multiple grocers. In addition, he served as chairman of the ministry's import committees for poultry and rabbits. He also encouraged his employees to consider their work as service in the national interest. Each was required to sign a declaration acknowledging that they understood that breaches of the rationing regulations would result in instant dismissal. This document was headed 'Food is a munition of war'. The points system which he introduced to ensure that non-rationed goods in short supply were allocated fairly to customers closely resembled the official points system later introduced by the Ministry of Food for groceries. Such measures, together with an advertising campaign which provided general information to customers on coping with food shopping in wartime and urged them to be public-spirited, contributed to the company's long-term reputation for fair dealing.

Alan Sainsbury's role as an adviser to the government continued after the war through his membership of the Williams committee on milk distribution from 1947 to 1948. It also led him to initiate a watershed in the family firm's history: the introduction of self-service. The post-war government's enthusiasm for the application of new food production methods and new sources of supply led, in 1949, to the issuing of diplomatic visas to Alan Sainsbury and fellow director Fred Salisbury to allow them to travel to America to study the frozen-food industry. While they were in the USA they were inspired by the progress made in America with self-service methods of food retailing. As Alan later put it, 'We came back so thrilled and stimulated with the potentiality of self-service trading that we became convinced that the future lay with what we thought were large stores of 10,000 square feet of selling space'. He reported to Sainsbury's board on 6 April 1949 that 'We cannot afford to ignore the USA experience, in spite of different circumstances.'

Immediate plans were drawn up to convert the store at 9/11 London Road, Croydon, into an experimental self-service branch. Alan Sainsbury's determination to apply the highest possible standards of service, hygiene, and salesmanship quickly led to the Croydon shop becoming regarded as a model not only for Sainsbury's, but for the trade as a whole. Customers appreciated the increased choice and convenience of self-service, and sales at the Croydon store almost trebled as a result of the conversion.

Alan Sainsbury perceived that the introduction of self-service demanded revolutionary changes in almost every aspect of the business, from store design and merchandising to food preparation methods, particularly for fresh foods. One of the most obvious signs of this new approach was in the design discipline he applied. In 1950 he appointed Leonard Beaumont as the company's design consultant. Together they created a radical new image for Sainsbury's self-service shops which was acclaimed for the attractiveness of its simple, clean lines and for its innovative approach to the use of design disciplines as a marketing tool. 'I wanted to get discipline into the look of things, and an avoidance of fussiness ... it may be my reaction to Victorianism ... Simplify, simplify!' he told Design magazine in 1967. The effect was to give graphic expression to his passion for fair dealing.

Alan Sainsbury became chairman of the company in 1956 on the death of his father. He and his brother retained their roles as joint general managers until 1962. Throughout his chairmanship Alan remained committed to preserving the firm's character as a family business. In the decade to 1965, total grocery turnover in the UK rose by almost 70 per cent, while Sainsbury's went up by more than 300 per cent.

In 1962 Sainsbury was created a life peer on the recommendation of Hugh Gaitskell, taking the Labour whip. The patent styled him Baron Sainsbury, of Drury Lane, after the location of his grandparents' first shop. Membership of the Lords allowed him to become a more active champion of consumers' rights. His opposition in the early 1960s to resale price maintenance, for example, was based on the conviction that the consumer had a right to expect retailers to pass on the cost savings made possible by scale and efficiency. He was chairman of the committee of enquiry into the relationship of the pharmaceutical industries with the National Health Service (1965-7) and of the food research advisory committee from 1965 to 1970, and served on the economic committee of the distributive trades (Little Neddy) from 1964 until 1968. His most powerful campaign, however, was directed against trading stamps in 1963-4. He regarded the stamps as a dishonest gimmick which benefited neither customers nor retailers, but merely added to the costs of distribution, which were ultimately passed on to consumers through higher prices. He led an energetic battle against trading stamps on three fronts: at Sainsbury's through an advertising campaign based on the slogan 'Honest to goodness value' which drew customers' attention to the hidden costs and misleading claims of trading stamp companies; through his chairmanship of the Distributive Trades Alliance, an industry body set up to oppose the spread of trading stamps; and in the House of Lords, where he sponsored a bill calling for controls on advertising and for stamps to be exchangeable for cash. It was a more limited bill which passed into law as the Trading Stamps Act (1964).

Sainsbury was also committed to industry groups dedicated to the exchange of information and the raising of standards in retailing. He was chairman of the Multiple Shops Federation from 1963 to 1965, of the Grocer's Institute from 1963 to 1966, and of the International Association of Chain Stores from 1965 to 1968. In 1967 he retired as chairman of Sainsbury's, accepting the title of life president. He continued to take an intense interest in the business but was disciplined in relinquishing full control to his successors: 'Now that I'm president, the rule is that nobody need ask my advice and if they do they needn't take it', he told Director magazine in 1982. Nevertheless, he retained an office at the firm's headquarters which he attended regularly until a few months before his death.

After his retirement from the business Alan Sainsbury remained active in politics, attending the House of Lords regularly. In 1981 he became a founder member of the Social Democratic Party. He was generous to a range of charities for underprivileged children, medical research, the furtherance of Jewish-Christian understanding and of civil liberties. One of his most loyal commitments was to the Pestalozzi Children's Village Trust, of which he became a founder trustee in 1957. He took a close interest in the trust's work and served on its council until 1993, for many years as its president. He died at his home, Hoses Farm, Toppesfield, Halstead, Essex, on 21 October 1998.

Bridget Salmon 

Sources  B. Williams, The best butter in the world (1994) + [J. Boswell], ed., J. S. 100: the story of Sainsbury's (1969) + P. Johnson, 'Business heroes: Lord Sainsbury', Director (April 1984) + 'Happy birthday', JS Journal (Aug 1982) [profile of Lord Sainsbury] + The Times (23 Oct 1998) + The Guardian (23 Oct 1998) + Daily Telegraph (26 Oct 1998) + The Independent (26 Oct 1998) + WWW + Burke, Peerage + personal knowledge (2004) + private information (2004) + b. cert. + m. certs. + d. cert.
Archives Sainsbury's Archives, London, archives
Likenesses  W. Bird, photograph, 1963, NPG [see illus.] · photograph, 1969, repro. in The Guardian · photograph, 1969, repro. in Daily Telegraph · photograph, 1969, repro. in The Independent · C. Drury, bronze bust, Sainsbury's head office, 33 Holborn, London · photograph, repro. in The Times · photographs, Sainsbury's Archives, London
Wealth at death  £9,113,876: probate, 16 Dec 1998, CGPLA Eng. & Wales



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