Super de Boer
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Super de Boer N.V. (Euronext: SDB) is a Dutch retail company which operates a chain of supermarkets in the country. The holding company for Super de Boer was formerly named Laurus N.V., but changed its name to that of its only remaining retail brand in January 2008. There are currently 330 Super de Boer stores exploited in the Netherlands, partly owned by franchisors. In the coming months this will drop to approximately 310 stores. The French food retail group Casino Guichard holds a 45% stake in Super de Boer.
[edit] History
The Super de Boer name comes from grocery stores opened by brothers Evert and Jan De Boer in 1925 and 1932. The two De Boer chains merged in 1970. In 1998, De Boer merged with Vendex N.V. to form Laurus, which had plans to rebrand all the stores under the Konmar name. In 2003 Laurus stopped the rebranding operation because of disappointing results. Existing Konmar stores were either transformed back to Super de Boer or remained using the Konmar brand. In 2006 Laurus decided to sell all Konmar and Edah stores to third parties, leaving Super de Boer as the only formula left for Laurus. In 2004 Laurus also started renewing the store's image in "operation Refresh Express". The goal of this renewal was to shake off the old (expensive) image and to freshen up the stores and private label products. The rivalry between these companies is huge.