Sainsbury’s, Caution and Quality in Business: A Sure but Steady Passage from Solitary Dairy Grocer’s Shop to a Major Supermarket Chain

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Commerce & Business, Local history, Retailing history

Next year, Sainsbury’s, which has long maintained a place on the podium of Britain’s leading supermarkets will reach its sesquicentennial milestone – 150 years in the grocery retailing trade. Over the last 20-plus years the company has had to content itself with the runner-up position in the market leadership ladder of supermarket chains, trailing the seemingly ubiquitous and dynamic Tesco which has swept all before it. Nevertheless, Sainsbury’s has carved itself a distinctive and impressive notch among the titans of modern British retailing since it first opened for business in the Victorian era.

Foundation years, butter and establishing the Sainsbury style
In 1869 the newly wed John James Sainsbury, founded Sainsbury’s in partnership with his wife, Mary Ann Sainsbury (née Staples). The two opened their first dairy goods shop at 173 Drury Lane, Holborn (London). Mrs Sainsbury played an active role in the business, in the early years she effectively managed the Drury Lane shop, making it “famous for the quality of its butter”. As Sainsbury’s built its formative business reputation largely on product quality, Mary Ann (the daughter of a dairyman) insisted on fresh milk on the shop’s shelves, as well as, that the Dutch supplier of Sainbury’s butter date-stamp every unit item it supplied [‘The History of Sainsbury’s – Trying Something New for 147 Years’, (Darren Turner, 11 Nov.), www.s4rb.com]. The freshness and purity of Sainsbury’s butter gave it a commercial edge over the competition in an era known for widespread food adulteration (eg, it was a common practice for milk to be watered down) [Judi Bevan, ‘Battle of the Supermarkets’, RSA Journal, Vol. 152, No 5517 (June 2003)].

In the 19th century Sainsbury’s rivals in the grocery game were shops like Lipton’s and Home and Colonial Stores. Early on John J Sainsbury developed a business model which made the shops stand out from the other grocers by doing things differently. Appearance was important to Sainsbury, the shops were clean and hygienic, on offer were “high-quality products and fresh provisions at prices even London’s poor could afford” (an early shop slogan was “Quality perfect, prices lower”).

A gradualist approach to growth
John J Sainsbury, whose motto could well have been “Make haste slowly”✱, was in no hurry to expand the business. From the Drury Lane foundations he gradually added a shop in Kentish Town and then two more in the new railway suburb⊡. It wasn’t until 1882 that Sainbury made his first move outside London, establishing a shop in Croydon, one that specifically sought to cater for a middle-class clientele, selling comestibles which were in the luxury range (foreign cheeses, poultry and game birds, cooked meat delicacies, etc) [‘Sainsbury family’, (Bridget Salmon), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (23-IX-2004), www.odnb.com].

Even well into the 20th century century each new Sainsbury’s store was a matter of measured deliberation…the company continued “to place the highest priority on quality, taking the time to weigh each decision, whether it meant researching suppliers for a new product, assessing the reliability of a new supplier, or measuring the business potential of a new site” [‘J Sainsbury plc History’, Funding Universe, www.fundinguniverse.com].

During John J Sainsbury’s tenure in charge, the company established what was to become the Sainsbury’s “house style”, stores which were elaborately decorated in contrast with the other (typically drab) grocers of the day. The key to the company’s success was covering all of the bases…John James would price-match the competition while at the same time offering higher standards of quality, service and hygiene. Moreover, the likes of Home and Colonial and Lipton’s, while having numerically more shops, could not match Sainsbury’s range of products [ibid.].

Sainsbury’s “Own Brands”
Although “own brands” are thought of as a modern phenomena in retail merchandising, Sainsbury’s first introduced the concept as early as 1882! The shop’s first own brand was its staple commodity – butter. Sainsbury’s continued this practice and by the 1950s there was a host of such offerings on the shelves: ‘Sainsbury’s Cornflakes’, ‘Sainsbury’s Snax Biscuits’, ‘Sainsbury’s Cola’, ‘Sainsbury’s Peas and Carrots’, etc, etc. [‘The History of Sainsbury’s’, loc.cit.]. By 1980 half of the products Sainsbury’s sold were under its own label [Bevan, op.cit.].

Modernising Sainsbury’s
In 1950 Sainsbury’s refitted one of its earliest shops, in West Croydon, creating what was Britain’s first supermarket proper, one of the country’s earliest to operate as fully self-service. Some customers were at first put off by the innovation, thinking it impersonal and “anti-social”, however the convenience factor of not having to wait to be served eventually won out…Advertising and Marketing magazine reviewing the new store concluded: “From the point of view of the customer the chief advantages of self-service shopping are the speed with which shopping can be done and the ease with which one is reminded of things needed…these advantages substantially outweigh the disadvantages of not getting the personal attention of the assistant.” [‘Sainsbury ‘s return to site of first self-service supermarket’, (Graham Ruddick), The Telegraph (UK), 30-Aug-2013, www.telegraph.co.uk].

Although under its founder Sainsbury’s had been reluctant to get too big too quickly, once the company passed to his successor, son John Benjamin Sainsbury✫, the number of stores grew (though still at a trademark cautious pace). Under the strong leadership of a string of postwar CEOs (such as (John) Baron Sainsbury of Preston Candover), this trend was maintained❂.

Although Sainsbury’s followed a typically cautious approach to its business model, the company couldn’t be accused of dragging its feet when it came to embracing new technology. In the early Sixties they were the first retailer in Britain to develop a computerised distribution system and their stores were among the first to turf out electronic cash registers in favour of scanners in the late Eighties [‘J Sainsbury plc’, www.company-histories.com].

In 1973 the company went public under the holding co name J Sainsbury plc after being floated on the stock market. The 1970s witnessed increasing competition from discounters and a squeezing of profit margins, prompting an escalation in diversification…non-food items started to appear on Sainsbury’s shelves. It also innovated with the advent of ‘Savacentre’ hypermarkets and ‘Homebase’ house and garden centres. Overseas expansion was concentrated in the US – Sainsbury’s acquired Shaw’s Supermarkets, Giant Food Inc and Star Markets (its holdings in Shaw’s were unloaded in 2004).

Stumble and renewal
During the Nineties, Sainsbury’s, hitherto accustomed to being the premier supermarket chain, was relegated to second place by Tesco which became supermarket “top dog” in the UK in 1995. A change-up was required at Sainsbury’s and further diversification was sought. In 1997 the company ventured into in-store banking (in partnership with the Bank of Scotland – before going it alone in 2014). During this period the 130-year direct involvement in running the company of the Sainsbury family came to an end with the retirement of David (Lord) Sainsbury. The acquisition of Bells Stores in the early 2000s signalled a move into convenience stores, adding to the variety of its retail outlets.

Sainsbury’s – status quo in 2018 and future fortunes?
In the contemporary British retail landscape, Sainsbury’s, with a healthy slab of the market, is the second largest chain in the country✥ with ≻1415 stores (2017) and ≻186,900 employees (2018). Despite having long conceded first place to Tesco, this state of play is a fluid one…no longer dominated by the Sainsbury family (though it retains 15% of shares in the company), these days the majority shareholder is the Qatar Investment Authority (note comparisons with Harrods). 2018 has seen Sainsbury’s unearth a bold attempt to unseat Tesco’s hegemony through a planned merger with ASDA which would give the merged entity around 30-31% of the UK market – as against about 27.5% for Tesco (Source: Kantar). Approval of the controversial merger is still pending but could depend upon Sainsbury’s and ASDA offloading 463 of their stores to win over the competition ‘watchdog’ (CMA) [‘Walmart’s Asda agrees to UK merger deal with Sainsbury’s’, (Silvia Amaro) 30-Apr-2018, www.cnbc.com; ‘Sainsbury’s and Asda may have to offload 460 stores to seal merger’, (Sarah Butler), The Guardian, 28-Sep-2018, www.theguardian.com].

Footnote: A “leg-up” for UK supermarkets
As the age of postwar austerity and scarcity gave way to an era of abundance and growth in the 1960s, supermarket heavyweights like Sainsbury’s and Tesco led the way. The supermarket chains on their expansionary arcs was facilitated by legislative changes affecting the retail sector. The abolition of resale price maintenance (RPM)✧ by the British Board of Trade in 1964 was a total game-changer! RPM had allowed (especially large) manufacturers to dictate terms to retailers, the law change shifted the balance in favour of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and co, who now could lord it over even the largest of manufacturers like Unilever and Procter & Gamble [James Buchan, Review of Trolley Wars by Judi Bevan, The Guardian, 30-Apr-2005].

PostScript: How Tesco outmanoeuvred and outgunned Sainsbury’s
One of the key moves made by Tesco was to take careful note of what the older retailer was doing right (eg, offering quality in goods and service) and copying it! (in “Tesco-speak” this is called ‘benchmarking’ the opposition) [Bevan, op.cit.]. As Tesco grew incrementally it benefitted from a “virtuous circle” of business⊙. The sheer, monolithic size of Tesco allows it to buy merchandise more cheaply and accordingly sell it more cheaply. Ergo, they turn over more customers and make greater sales, and so the cycle is sustains itself [Buchan loc.cit.]. Tesco has a reputation for following intuitive hunches…being less risk adverse than other major supermarkets like Sainsbury’s it happily ventured into lower class, ‘brownfield’ areas that its competitors wouldn’t touch [Bevan, op.cit.].

—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧—‧
✱ Festina lente – the motto of Roman emperors Augustus and Titus, et al
⊡ a calculated, gradual approach to expansion suited John James who had a very hands-on management style, by temperament he was a “micro-manager”, immersing himself in the minutiae of the shops’ everyday transactions
✫ known for his focus on staff welfare and remembered by one of his senior staff as a “benevolent dictator”, [‘Sainsbury family’, loc.cit.]
❂ there have so many Sainsbury family members involved in the company, in British politics, in art patronage and philanthropy, to almost necessitate a scorecard
✥ although it briefly conceded second place to the Walmart owned ASDA in 2003/2004
✧ Resale price maintenance (or retail price maintenance) is a practice where the distributor agrees to sell at a price set by the manufacturer
⊙ a business scenario the Financial Times described as “hard to create, but (also) hard to disrupt”

The Much Mooted ‘Hillbilly Wars’ of Appalachia: The McCoy v. Hatfield Feud

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Popular Culture, Regional History

One of the iconic historic associations with the hills of Appalachia is the fateful conflict in the last quarter of the 19th century between two mountain-dwelling families – the Hatfields and the McCoys. The feud between the two “warring clans” has tended to be wrapped in the veneer of legend, obscured by the myth-making of popular culture over the decades. The McCoy-Hatfield feud has featured in a raft of US books, songs, comic strips, feature movies and television shows (with both animated and human content)✱. These overwhelmingly fictionalised narratives of the Hatfields and the McCoys have vouchsafed a place for them in the annals of American folklore and at the same time contributed to the caricatured impression of ‘hillbillies’ in the popular consciousness.

Tug Fork Valley and the family patriarchs
In the 19th century the McCoys lived (as they do today) on the Kentucky side of Tug Fork (a tributary of the Big Sandy River), with the Hatfields residing on the other side of the river (in West Virginia). The Hatfield patriarch was William Anderson Hatfield, widely known as ‘Devil Anse’, while the patriarch of the McCoys was Randolph McCoy (sometimes identified as ‘Randall’ McCoy). Of the two families the Hatfields were appreciably more affluent than the McCoys (Devil Anse’s profitable timber business employed many men including some McCoys).

Patriarch of the Hatfield family, ‘Devil Anse’ ⬇
Background to the feud
The earliest incident between the two families seemed to have occurred during the Civil War…in 1865 Asa Harmon McCoy, who fought with the Union during the war, was ambushed and killed by members of a local Confederate militia connected to the Hatfield family. Some have identified the feud’s genesis in the murder, but Harmon McCoy’s siding with the North (while almost all of the McCoys and the Hatfields gave their allegiances to the Confederacy) made him unpopular with both families. His death did not trigger a reprisal and most historians have concluded that the incident was a stand-alone event [‘The Hatfield & McCoy Feud’, History, www.history.com].

A porcine pretext for feuding
Some thirteen years after the shooting of Randall McCoy’s brother, a new incident was the catalyst for a downward decline in relations between the McCoys and the Hatfields. The trigger was a dispute over the ownership of a razorback hog in 1878. The McCoy clan claimed that the Hatfields had stolen one of their pigs. A subsequent legal case (known as the “Hog Trial”) was brought before the local Justice of the Peace (who happened to be a Hatfield), who predictably dismissed the charge…the McCoys responded by killing one of the allies of the Hatfields.

Makings of a vendetta: “Tit-for-tat” acts of vengeance
Over the next ten to twelve years a pattern emerged of accusations, recriminations, acts of violence and retaliations – with excesses on both sides. Both clans used their connexions with the law in ‘home’ jurisdiction (either Kentucky or West Virginia) to try to exact retribution against the other. In separate incidents, the McCoy boys ‘arrested’ Johnse (pronounced “John-see”) Hatfield after he entered into a romantic liaison with Roseanna McCoy✦, followed in turn by Hatfield constables apprehending and extraditing three of Roseanna’s brothers for the killing of Devil Anse Hatfield’s brother Ellison.

Escalation and denouement of the feud
By now “bad blood” was endemic between the families. In the years after 1882 the conflict escalated dramatically…killings met with counter-killings (more than 12 members or associates of the two families died during the decade). A Hatfield raid on the McCoy patriarch’s farm in 1888 – known as the ‘New Year Night’s Massacre’ – resulted in the murder of two of Randolph McCoy’s children. The subsequent Battle of the Grapevine Creek, an attempt by the Hatfields to take out the McCoys once and for all, resulted in an ambush gone wrong…the tables were turned on the Hatfield raiders and the bulk of their number were arrested. Over the next few years they were tried and all given jail sentences (except one, possibly a ‘scapegoat’, who was executed). The ill feelings slowly dissipated with the conclusion of the trials and the conflict receded from memory – in 1890 the New York Times reported that the feud was at an end (there was in fact still the odd simmering flare-up such as in the mid 1890s but the potentially explosive incidents were effectively over) [‘A Long Feud Ended’, NYT, 06-Sep-1890, www.rarenewspapers.com].

⇧ Hatfield clan 1890s

Scope of the feud: a media “beat-up”?
While the McCoy-Hatfield feud played out in the Appalachians, the Eastern Seaboard press whetted the public’s imagination with its well-received accounts of the conflict. The press coverage tended to be negative, especially towards the wealthier Hatfields, who it portrayed as “violent backwoods hillbillies” roaming the mountains wreaking violence. As the shootings continued, what had been a local story of isolated homicides got national traction and was sensationalised by the newspapers.[‘History’, loc.cit.]. Some historians, in particular Altina Waller, have argued that the myth-making surrounding the ‘feud’ has obscured the realities and significance of the event. Waller’s contention is that the feud lasted only twelve years – from the hog episode to the sentencing of the Hatfields. [AL Waller, Feuds, Hatfields, McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia,1860-1900, (1988)].

Advocates for the Appalachian region tend to view the Hatfield-McCoy feud (as depicted by the press) as part of the widespread stereotyping of the entire mountain region [West Virginia Archives and History,, ‘Time Trail, West Virginia’ (1998), www.wvculture.org]. The negativity of the story and the focus on it by external mechanisms of popular culture is seen by many locals in Pike and Mingo counties (where the events took place) and the wider region as another example of the outside’s “Appalachia bashing”✥.

Matewan (WV) wall illustration: ⬆ depicting the Hatfield-McCoy feud

Economic underpinnings of the feud
The feud at its height was a deeply personal one for both families, however an underlying factor in the hostilities was the depressed economic situation in Appalachia at the time. Resentment of Devil Anse Hatfield’s success as a timber merchant (contrasted with the less sanguine fortunes of the McCoys) no doubt played a part in the inter-family tensions. Given the McCoys’ struggle to make a go of farming their land, the incident of the stolen hog (from their perspective) was a serious economic setback for the family. Another player and prime mover behind the conflict was McCoy cousin Perry Cline, who hated Devil Anse and the Hatfields as much as any of the McCoys. Cline was sued by Devil Anse for allegedly cutting timber on Hatfield land. Devil Anse won the judgement and was awarded as damages all of Cline’s virgin West Virginian land (5,000 acres). From that point on, Cline, a lawyer, believing he had been robbed of his rightful property, unwaveringly pursued the Hatfields using his political connections in Kentucky. Cline’s actions, spurred on by the desire to payback Devil Anse Hatfield, helped revive and prolong the feud [AL Waller, ‘Hatfield-McCoy: Economic motives fuelled feud that tarred region’s image’, Lexington Herald Leader, 30-Jul-2012, www.kentucky.com].

Footnote: Rampant flourishing commercialism
The famous feud is long-buried but not forgotten in the Tug Fork and Big Sandy River valleys. The opportunity for commercial advantage from the McCoys and Hatfields’ past remains alive…tourism of the area is well-served by the “Hatfield and McCoy Historical Site Restoration”. In the 21st century reunion festivals and marathons (“no feudin’, just runnin'”) have taken place. More crassly opportunistic was the appearance of descendants of the two families as contestants on the TV panel show ‘Family Feud’ in 1979 [‘Hatfield-McCoy feuds’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

PostScript: The ‘Sheep Wars’
The Hatfield-McCoy feud is not the only protracted inter-clan feud in American history, just the most famous. Arizona’s version of Hatfield v. McCoy was the Pleasant Valley Feud (AKA the ‘Tonto Range War’) which pitted the Grahams’ against the Tewksburys’ in the 1880s and ’90s…the Arizona-based feud was the classic “grazing war” of cattle-men versus sheep-herders, a recurring source of conflict in much of the ‘Old West’ [‘Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War’, www.legandsofamerica.com].

Tewksbury homestead

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Ya-hooo! The Ad-men milking the stereotype for all its worth…

✱ the preceding blog, ‘Ma and Pa Kettle on the Farm Again: Hillbilly Stereotypes in Film and Television’ touched on films based on the McCoy and Hatfield saga. Even in mainstream product advertising, the  overly hirsute, “Moonshine-crazed”, “gun-toting” hillbilly trope permeates, eg. PepsiCo’s “Mountain Dew” soft drink
✦ the subject of a 1949 Hollywood B-movie (Roseanna McCoy) which largely fictionalised the cross-clan romance – New York Times‘ short-hand summation of the movie was “feudin’, fussin’ and lovin'”. The real Johnse later dumped Roseanna for another McCoy, her cousin Nancy who he married
✥ part of a whole litany of complaints by Appalachians about how they are portrayed in the media, in film and TV, by Democrat politicians in the big cities

Ma and Pa Kettle on the Farm Again: Hillbilly Stereotypes in Film and Television

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Media & Communications, Social History

Hillbilly (noun) informal, chiefly derogatory: an unsophisticated country person [Oxford Dictionary of English]. Etymology: unknown, however the explanation favoured by Anthony Harkins is persuasive if not definitive – coming from the melding of “hill-fort” with “billie” (friend or companion) by Scottish highlanders [‘Hillbillies’, Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture,www.encyclopediaofarkansashistoryandculture.net✱]

☋☊☋☊☋☊ ☋☊☋☊☋☊

The title of this blog references a popular 1950s movie series which neatly encapsulates the essence of the negative  stereotypes of the ‘hillbilly’ conveyed through cinema and television that the jaundiced eye of Hollywood has delighted in perpetuating over the decades – in the name of humour. “Ma and Pa Kettle” are two impoverished and uneducated but headstrong back-country bumpkins on a dilapidated wreck of a farm with 16 mostly out-of-control children (“Hen-pecked” ‘Pa’ is slow-thinking and pathologically indolent, singularly dedicated to the pursuit of the avoidance of any work; ‘Ma’ is a large and loudly haranguing woman and only one cog brighter than her not-intellectually-overburdened husband!). The characters made their visual debut in a 1949 movie The Egg and I (based on a novel by Betty McDonald) in supporting parts but proved so popular that Universal Studios elevated them to leads which segued into nine more films with titles like Ma and Pa Kettle Go to Town, Ma and Pa Kettle at the Fair and Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki ⌑
.

In popular currency the notion of the hillbilly has an overwhelmingly pejorative connotation anywhere within the reach of American culture (ie, everywhere!), especially as a topic of discussion or comment outside the American South. The stereotype is deeply embedded in and has been perpetuated through the agency of American popular culture – in literature, there have been long-running hillbilly comic strips ridiculing country folk as basically “dumber than dumb”, especially seen in ‘Li’l Abner’ and ‘Snuffy Smith’ (at left). But the idea of hillbillies as backward, ornery and all the other negative connotations associated with them, has been nowhere more pervasive than on the celluloid screen, both big and small.

The Southern Appalachians ⬇️ ️️
The perception given by popular cinema and television comedy is that hillbillies can be found in a loosely defined geographical region somewhere in the American South. If need arises in a storyline to pinpoint their location more precisely, screenwriters will tend to locate them in mountainous areas, and if named it will usually be in one of two southern physiographic regions, either the Ozarks (extending over parts of Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Kansas) or the massive Appalachians (several systems of mountains but usually “Appalachian hillbillies” are depicted as coming from Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, and (parts of) Ohio)✥.
The Ozarks (“Hillibilly haven”) ⬆️

The hillbilly trope
Hollywood, from the pioneering days of the film industry, has been happy to resort to negative stereotypes of the hillbilly. The early film emphasis was on showing the hillbilly as an agent of violence and social menace, as degenerates and outcasts, only after WWII do we start to see hillbillies as a screen vehicle for innocuous farce and comic effect with the advent of Ma and Pa Kettle and the TV comedies that followed in the Sixties [A Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon, (2005)]. The motion pictures’ use of a hillbilly trope can be seen in films as far back as the 1904 silent The Moonshiner…in fact the story of the hillbilly clandestinely making ‘moonshine’ in the backwaters while evading the law has been a much-used trope in movies, recurring for example recently in the Prohibition-era ‘bootlegging’ flick Lawless (2012) [‘Portraying Appalachia: How the Movies Can Get it Wrong’, (Tom Porter), Bowdoin News Archive, 09-Jun-2017, www.community.bowdoin.edu

The South is “a different country”: More audience fodder for Hollywood
In the television age Hollywood’s “go-to” take on hillbillies typically utilises the persona for pure comic intent, mercilessly exposing and ridiculing the (usually) working class hillbilly for his or her wilful ignorance, lack of education and sophistication, depicting him or her as “pre-modern and ignorant hillbillies” (in Anthony Harkins’ words) to create, “one of the more lasting and pervasive images in American popular iconography” [Harkins, op.cit.]. Given that areas like Appalachia with its coal-dependent economy are cyclically prone to recurrent “booms and busts”, poverty is a familiar reality for very many of those residing in such places, accordingly Hollywood has traditionally seen hillbillies as soft targets, comfortable in showing up their unworldliness and illiteracy for a laugh…the Beverly Hillbillies of that popular American TV comedy of the same name are “dirt-poor” until Jed makes a fortuitous discovery on their ‘worthless’ land which transforms the ‘Hicksville’ family into “oil-rich tycoons”.

‘Monstrous mountaineers’ and other ‘psychopaths’
The comedic hillbilly has proved a rich source of material for movies and television, but as a variant from time to time Hollywood has also presented a very different, menacing on-screen hillbilly persona – the classic cinematic example of this is perhaps the 1972 Deliverance movie. Deliverance portrays hillbillies as sadistic, lawless types bereft of any semblance of moral compass, ‘inbred’✪ nefarious individuals who commit acts which are both morally and sexually depraved⍍. In hillbilly movies of this type, in place of the benign and fun-loving “Good Ol’ Boys”, are more brooding and sinister Southerners, sometimes isolated loners, psychotic serial-killers and even corrupt sheriffs. Meredith McCarroll, in a study focusing on the Appalachians [Unwhite: Appalachia, Race and Film, (2018)], has identified several distinct tropes of hillbilly movies. McCarroll’s typology includes Monstrous Mountaineer [Deliverance, Wrong Turn (2003), Timber Halls (2007)]; Heroic Highlander [Next of Kin (1982)], Killing Season (2013); Lazy Hillbilly [Our Hospitality (1923), Kentucky Moonshine (1938)]✜.

Where are the “black hillbillies?” “Honorary non-whites?”
McCarroll in her just published book focussed on the fact that the hillbillies portrayed in Hollywood movies and television are phenotypically white…the towns of Hillbilly films and TV comedies typically, are uniformly devoid of black people, eg, The Andy Griffith Show/Mayberry, R.F.D. (despite the reality, a concentration of large numbers of African-Americans in the South!?!). Leaving aside the anomalous element of that scenario for a moment, in Unwhite McCarroll argues that the depiction of white hillbillies on the screen – characteristically disparaging – signifies that the TV and film-makers are applying the same kind of negative trope traditionally employed by Hollywood to vilify non-white minority groups (native Americans, Black and Hispanic peoples), as part of the ‘other’ in society [McCarroll, cited in ‘McCarroll’s book debunks myths about Appalachia’, (Lucas Weitzenberg), Bowdoin Orient, 28-Sep-2018, www.bowdoinorient.com].

The 2018 independent documentary Hillbilly (Sarah Rubin and Ashley York) offers a similar critique on the vilification of specifically Appalachian, but of Southern culture generally. Decrying the screen prevalence of negative hillbilly stereotypes (represented as promiscuous, “buffoonish alcoholics” and “trailer trash”), at the same time York and Rubin make a link between those stereotypes and the corporate exploitation of the Appalachian Mountains’ natural resources [‘”Hillbilly” Reclaims Appalachia’s Identity Against Lasting Insidious Stereotypes’, Pop Matters, (Argun Ulgen), 21-Nov-2018, www.popmatters.com; ‘”Hillbilly” explores stereotypes of Appalachia’, Times-Tribune, (Brad Hall), 19-Sep-2018, www.thetimestribune.com].

Escaping to an imagined and idealised South
Hollywood’s hillbilly stereotypes extend to a romanticisation of the hillbilly, often their lives are romanticised as simple and uncomplicated (much as native and Black Americans and Mexicans are!). The hillbilly is shown as backward and quaintly pre-industrial, embodied in the famous river bank scene in Deliverance of hillbillies lazing about with nothing better to do than mindlessly pluck banjos [McCarroll, op.cit.]. Allied to this perception, Hollywood’s hillbilly tropes are a component of “using the South as a foil for modern life”…for Americans living in the Sixties and Seventies it was a confrontational time, full of harsh realities and worrying big issues such as the conflict over the Vietnam War, race riots, poverty and the Cold War. Feeding the viewing public a diet of idyllic and irenic images of Southern harmony, a distorted sense of life not being too serious, provided a palatable form of escapism for Americans in the big cities. So we got shows like The Andy Griffith Show, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres and The Dukes of Hazzard, presenting fictional Southern ‘Hicksville’ towns with names like ‘Mayberry’ and ‘Hooterville’, peopled by harmless hayseed sheriffs and shopkeepers [‘The Weird History of Hillbilly TV’, (Gabe Bullard), www.bittersoutherner.com].

‘Hicksploitation’ reality obsession
In the age of reality TV saturating our screens, the subject matter of hillbillies has far from abated. The trope has perpetuated itself within this sub-genre of television with a string of titles pitched fairly and squarely at the LCD in society…Swamp People, Moonshiners, Bayou Billionaires, Hillbilly Handfishin’, American Hoggers, and even Lady Hoggers, as well primus inter pares, the much-hyped docu-drama Duck Dynasty. Reality hillbilly shows keep faith with the standard formula, peopled with folk who are not exactly what you’d call cerebral, rather they are raucous, profane, intolerant, “anything goes” ‘rednecks’…so lots of guns around, wild animals of various kinds, ‘Down-South” stills producing copious amounts of “sly grog”, “hunting-and-a-fishing”, excessive facial hair, Confederate flags, lack of respect for authority, etc. Despite the often appalling and sometimes degrading behaviour exhibited in “redneck reality TV”, viewers continue to subscribe in meaningful numbers to this brand of “televisional fare”. Testimony perhaps to the fact that “people will (always) tune in to see themselves on screen or the extremes of another culture” [“‘Redneck’ reality TV is one big ‘Party'”, (Patrick Ryan), USA Today, 09-Dec-2014, www.usatoday.com].

PostScript: “Warring Hillbillies” folklore
One of the well-trawled narrative sources for hillbilly films and TV programs has been the historical feud between the Hatfield and the McCoy clans (1860s-1890s). The protracted conflict between the two neighbouring mountaineering families, stretching from West Virginia to Kentucky, a part of Appalachian folklore, caught the imagination of Hollywood, providing it with ample material for screen productions over the years. This has included both comedies and dramas, ranging from Abbott and Costello’s farcical Comin’ Round the Mountain to the more recent (2012) Hatfields and McCoy miniseries.[see also the following article – ‘The Much Mooted ‘Hillbilly Wars’ of Appalachia : The McCoy v. Hatfield Feud’]

∇ Ma minus Pa – the Kettles’ swan-song


✱ the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture points out that the word ‘hillbilly’ is often used interchangeably with several other derogatory epithets – eg, ‘redneck’, ‘white trash’ and ‘cracker’
⌑ despite being depicted as quintessential ‘hillbillies’ (as defined by popular culture), Ma and Pa Kettle, both in the original book and in the films live in a rural locale somewhere in Washington state…not Appalachia or the Ozarks or anywhere in the South (although one of the series entries is The Kettles in the Ozarks). Not confining itself to the negative profiling of hillbillies, the Kettle movies delve even deeper into stereotypes with a thorough “hatchet job” on the series’ two dim American ‘Indian’ characters – ‘Crowbar’ and ‘Geoduck’
✥ although people labelled as ‘hillbillies’ don’t necessarily have to live in the mountains per se to be thus categorised
✪ remember, Elvis made a ‘hillbilly’ movie called Kissin’ Cousins
⍍ we see through Hollywood’s lens suggestions of promiscuity, of inbreeding, bestiality, all manner of sexual deviance, attributed to the on-screen hillbilly [Hall, loc.cit]. To balance the negative slant slightly, as Tom Porter notes, on rarer occasions screen depictions do exist which present mountaineers more positively – as rugged and even heroic folk living outside societal norms living independently on their wits (somewhat akin to filmic representations of the “Wild West” prior to the 1970s), Porter, loc.cit.]
✜ McCarroll also nominates an infinitely smaller list of “hillbilly movies” which manage, to greater or lesser degree, to avoid the standard stereotypes [eg, Winter’s Bone (2010), Norma Rae (1979), Matewan (1987)]

Top Shelf Tesco, (Super)Market Leader: The Irresistible Rise of Britain’s Leading Grocer

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Commerce & Business, Regional History, Retailing history

In the UK’s highly competitive retail world Tesco plc is the kingpin grocer, at the top of the tree of Britain’s supermarket chains. With over 3,400 stores across the UK and a presence in around a dozen countries worldwide✱, Tesco pulled in revenue in 2017 to the tune of £55.9B. The retailer’s origins though, way back at the end of the Great War, were of course much more humble. Like fellow high-flying UK retailer, Marks and Spencer, it began with one man and a market stall operation.

Jack Cohen got the business ball rolling in 1919 with a basic stall✥ in the Well Street Market, Hackney, London…for start-up capital Cohen (born ‘Jacob Kohen’) had a £30 stipend from his recent WWI service. From his barrow and stall operation, the antecedent of Tesco, the 21-year-old started off selling matzos (unleavened Jewish crisp bread) and other army surplus food he had purchased. On opening day Cohen made a princely £1 profit from a grand total of £4 in sales [‘A History of Tesco: The rise of Britain’s biggest supermarket’, by Tim Clark and Szu Ping Chan, The Telegraph, 04-Oct-2014, www.telegraph.co.uk].

Genesis of the business name
In the early days, a big-ticket item that Cohen sold was tea from T E Stockwell (in fact the first product sold by Cohen under the Tesco brand). From the Stockwell name Cohen simply took the first three initials ‘T E S’ and added the first two letters of his own name ‘C O’ on to the end of it – thus forming the business’s famous name, ‘TESCO’ (and unsold “Stockwell Tea” got repackaged and rebranded as “Tesco Tea”).

From North London to the nation
Cohen opened his first shop in Burnt Oak, near Edgware, North London, in 1931. Within a short period he had built the company headquarters and a central warehouse also in North London (Edmonton). The London retailer’s strategy was twofold – to expand by gradually buying out smaller grocery stores, and to buy the unsold merchandise other grocers couldn’t sell, which he would repackage and rebrand and then on-sell it to the public cheaper than anyone else (earning himself the nickname ‘Slasher Jack’) [‘Tesco UK, brief history and overview’, www.eeph.org.uk].

Cohen’s business motto, and therefore the company’s motto, was “pile it high and sell it cheap”, a straight-forward business philosophy of “low cost and high volume”✪ along the line of the large Woolworths chain. One of Cohen’s “bargain basement” product mainstays was ‘Snowflake’, a New Zealand canned milk which accounted (together with Tesco Tea) for much of the early Tesco sales [Sarah Ryle, The Making of Tesco: A Story of British Shopping (2013)]. By 1939 there were in excess of 100 Tesco shops all round the United Kingdom. Where Cohen chose to locate a Tesco, seems according to his daughter (the future Conservative MP Dame Shirley Porter) to have been something of an intuitive hunch. As she later explained, they’d be driving around town and “he’d suddenly say ‘this looks like a good place for a shop’ and he’d leap out and chat a few people up”. This was the very hands-on way Cohen would conduct market research [Ryle, op.cit.].

First with self-serve
Jack Cohen’s introduction to the idea of self-service grocery outlets came on a visit to the US in 1935…Cohen was initially not impressed. The immediate postwar period in Britain was characterised by a hike in wholesale costs of goods, which could not be passed on to customers due to the burdens of postwar austerity. Cohen made a return visit to the US at this time, accompanied by his son-in-law Hymon Kreitman who was enthusiastic about the American self-serve concept as typified by the pioneering Piggly Wiggly supermarkets. Cohen, influenced by Kreitman, eventually opened Tesco’s (and Britain’s) very first self-service shop at St Albans (Herts.) in 1948 as a way of countering the rising costs of commodities. Another first for Tesco was the first supermarket in the UK, opened in 1958, located in Maldon, Essex (it featured separate counters for meat, butter and cheese) [‘Jack Cohen (businessman)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Maldon supermarket (interior) ⬇️

Expansionary growth
The 1950s and ’60s for Tesco was marked by unbounded expansion through the acquiring of many smaller grocery shops. Among the scalps of small retail outlets claimed by the burgeoning company were Burnards stores, Williamson’s shops, Harrow stores, Irwin’s shops, Charles Phillips’ shops and the Victor-Value chain (this last concern was unloaded by Tesco in the Eighties). Between 1955 and 1960 alone, Cohen bought over 500 new shops across the country [‘Tesco: How one supermarket came to dominate’, (Denise Winterman), BBC Magazine, 09-Sep-2013, www.bbc.com].

After Jack died in 1979 Tesco’s expansionary trajectory continued unabated…there was a hostile takeover of Hillards supermarket chain in 1987, the acquisition of William Low shops in 1994 gave them a greater market concentration in Scotland, as did the snaring of Associated British Foods three years later for Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Safeways/BP shops, and a move into convenience stores T&S Stores and Adminstore followed. The opening of Tesco’s Leicester “super-sized” store in 1961 made it, at that time, the largest grocery store in Europe. By the 1990s Tesco had overtaken Sainsbury’s as Britain’s largest food retailer. So extensive has been the spread of Tesco shops, it is thought that only one postcode in the entire UK – Harrogate in North Yorkshire – doesn’t have a Tesco in it! [Clark & Chan, op.cit.].

Diversifying Tesco
From the Sixties Tesco started to diversify in a big way! To the traditional staple of grocery lines were added clothing, books, furniture, software, internet services and in 1974 the sale of petrol. The Tesco Bank (financial services) was launched in a joint venture with the Royal Bank of Scotland, and later gained a foothold in the communications field with the advent of Tesco Mobile [‘Tesco’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Diversification also meant a dilution of Slasher Jack’s traditional retail philosophy of providing only the cheapest of the cheap. This change-up saw Tesco for the first time add upmarket quality items to its catalogues. The physical nature of Tesco’s retail outlets diversified during this period. To the standard supermarket format was added hypermarkets (called Tesco Extra) at one end of the spectrum, and “one stop” shops/neighbourhood convenience stores (Tesco Express) at the other. In between these polarities were Tesco Metro and Tesco Superstores. Such market manoeuvrability by Tesco has drawn praise from business analysts – Citigroup’s David McCarthy acknowledges Tesco’s capacity to “appeal to all segments of the market” [‘Tesco: Supermarket Superpower’, (Hannah Liptrot), 03-Jun-2005, www.bbc.com]. It has also been (reluctantly) commended by a critic of the grocery Goliath for its “clinical efficiency with which it carries out its business plan” [Andrew Simms, Tescopoly: How One Shop Came Out on Top and Why it Matters, (2007)].

Tesco Malaysia

Internationalising Tesco
Inevitably, growth and profitability at home meant external expansion for Tesco, a move towards globalisation. The company acquired various overseas market footholds with majority stake holdings in established Turkish supermarket chain Kipar and in Polish Leader Price wspanialy-rynki (supermarkets), among others. The overseas results however have tended to fall well short of Tesco’s stellar domestic performance. A 2006 move into the US market with the Fresh & Easy chain was unsuccessful, resulting in a £1.2B loss and in 2013 Tesco completed their pull-out from North America [‘Wikipedia’, op.cit.].

Inverness high street

Too big, too damaging?
The phenomenal retail success of Tesco ⌖ is encapsulated by the popular phrase in Britain, “£1 in every seven went into a Tesco till!” Inverness in the Scotland Highlands (known locally as ‘Tesco Town’) personifies the dominance of Tesco – 50p in every £1 spent on food, it is calculated, is derived from one of Tesco’s three shops in the northern city [Liptrot, loc.cit.; ‘The supermarket that ate a town’, (Lorna Martin), The Guardian, 01-Jan-2006, www.theguardian.com]. Other cities and towns across the UK share Inverness’ concerns of urban domination by the retailer…Seaton in Devon’s east is staring at the prospect of becoming another “Tesco Town”. Tesco has flagged plans to build a superstore, hundreds of ‘Tesco’ homes and a hotel in the small town, triggering determined local opposition to the scheme [‘This town has been sold to Tesco’, (Anna Minton), The Guardian, 05-May-2010, www.theguardian.com].

Ultimately, it is Tesco’s size that courts the company’s most strident criticism and opposition. Increasingly, the sheer size and scale of the supermarket empire gives it a disproportionate degree of bargaining power with manufacturers. Since 2000 the British authorities have sought to address the uncompetitive nature of the status quo, a code of practice was enacted in that year to try to curb Tesco’s (and other large retail players’) market dominance to the serious detriment of small traders in the UK (the National Consumer Council has described Tesco as “the Marmite of British business”). Interestingly, consumer surveys in the UK point to the consumer public’s “Janus-headed” take on Tesco, it ranks as both the “most trusted” and the “least trusted” of companies in the country! [David Gray (Analyst, Planet Retail), quoted in Winterman, op.cit.]. The recent Tesco takeover of Booker Wholesale Group (2017/18) for £3.7B, given the green light by the UK’s competition watchdog (CMA), has however provoked widespread disquiet within those in British society concerned at what they see as yet another monopolistic move for the retail behemoth [‘Tesco’s £3.7bn Booker takeover waved through by competition regular’, (A Armstrong & J Torrance), The Telegraph (UK), 20-Dec-2017, www.telegraph.co.uk].

Ripples in the Tesco ocean
The hostility of small retailers at Tesco’s strangulation of competition in the supermarket field❅ is not the only discordant note in Tesco’s recent history. Its high public profile has prompted at least two attempts at extortion using the threat of letter bombs…in 2000-2001 an individual tried to extort £5M from the supermarket giant (he was subsequently caught and jailed for 16 years); later a former tax inspector demanding £1M from Tesco, tried the same method (also apprehended and imprisoned). Tesco has tended to court controversy on occasions, eg, quantities of horsemeat were discovered in burgers and spaghetti sold by Tesco, and of course almost a by-product of runaway commercial success, there has been a slew of charges over the years that Tesco was engaging in tax avoidance schemes, tax minimisation, etc. Tesco was heavily criticised by the CEO of UNICEF UK in 2009 for appropriating the children’s charity’s slogan “Change for Good” and crassly using it for commercial advantage in company advertising [‘Unicef accuses Tesco of misusing charity slogan’, (Marie O’Halloran), The Irish Times, 25-Jul-2009, www.irishtimes.com]. As well there have been isolated incidences of individual Tesco shops discriminating against blind people (especially barring entry) [‘Tesco’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]. Tesco’s corporate response after such periodical outbreaks of bad PR has been to launch charm offensives aimed at the public (such as its “Good neighbour” policy in the 2000s) [Simms, loc,cit.].

Until very recently Tesco has experienced seemingly unstoppable success. However things troughed for the retailer during financial years 2013-14 and 2014-15, in the latter year Tesco lost £6.4B, its worse fiscal performance in 20 years! [Clark & Chan, op.cit.]. Since then the supermarket chain (boosted by acquiring the Booker cash and carry group) has to no one’s surprise bounced back, in 2018 recording its strongest growth in seven years (UK and Irish sales rose 3.5%). It has also just introduced Jack’s stores which it hopes will wrest back losses in the discount store market from front runners, German supermarket heavyweights, Aldi and Lidl [‘Tesco posts highest growth in seven years’, (Sarah Butler), The Guardian 15-Jun-2018, www.theguardian.com].

PostScript: Tesco to (super)market leader
What makes Tesco a cut above its rivals? Enormity of size and utter ruthlessness and aggression in business dealings has been a factor, but according to some observers, the key to its success has been its ability to read customer behaviour: going way back Tesco has been meticulous about collecting raw data on what consumers were buying, invaluable information for anticipating future patterns, staying ahead of the curve! Tesco introduced loyalty schemes, personalised discounts and rewards for its customers, above all the Tesco Clubcard (“Every little helps”) – the card was an immediate hit, within a year of its debut (1995), Clubcard holders were spending 28% more at its stores and Tesco was number 1 with a bullet in the rankings of British grocers [Winterman, loc.cit; ‘The card up their sleeve’, The Guardian 19-Jul-2003, www.theguardian.com].

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✱ including stores in Ireland, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Malaysia, India, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Thailand (and previously in the US)
✥ his precise start in the world of retail sales was in fact as a barrow boy
✪ to which he added an internal one, actually a motivational pitch for sales staff, “YCDBSOYA” (You Can’t Do Business Sitting On Your Arse”) [‘Shirley Porter: Rich, flashy and corrupt with it. She’s nothing like a Dame’, (Sean O’Grady), The Independent, 16-Dec-2001, www.theindependent.co.uk]
⌖ fifth biggest grocery chain in the world, biggest UK retailer by sales, biggest UK employer (>330,000 staff) [Winterman, loc.cit.]
❅ for instance, the Office of Fair Trading investigated the company for allegedly forming a cartel of supermarkets (with Safeway, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s) to fix the price of dairy products