Siegfried Wild, founder of the retail organization Spar Austria, died last week at the age of 93. He helped write commercial history in the post-war period. The 13 colleagues with whom he founded the trading group more than 60 years ago had already passed away.
14 Austrian wholesalers had joined forces in 1954, following the example of the Dutch Spar Group, to make the many small village grocers between Lake Constance and Lake Neusiedl competitive in modern trade. “My father was doing a traineeship in Germany and saw the success that the most efficient wholesalers and the best food retailers were having when they appeared together under the Spar brand,” says Marcus Wild.
The then 25-year-old young entrepreneur Siegfried Wild convinced his father, a wholesaler in Steyr, of the idea and, together with the Tyrolean savings icon Hans Reisch, was the pioneer.
The cooperation in purchasing and logistics strengthened the efficiency of the rapidly growing number of savings merchants. The young Siegfried Wild had to win small grocers for Spar in eastern Upper Austria and western Lower Austria. “It was my life’s work as a small trader in Steyr to be part of this large group,” Wild recalled to OÖN.
But he was also a pioneer when he opened the first self-service shop in Steyr-Münichholz in 1957. Wild: “We worked out what to call it. Free choice shop was an idea.”
The Spar functionaries moved ever closer together and sometimes had to jump over their shadow as independent entrepreneurs. But without new ideas and a willingness to take risks, they would have been just as doomed to failure as later their competitors Konsum and Meinl, Lowa and Familia.
In 1970 the ten remaining retailers merged to form Spar Aktiengesellschaft. The AG was also allowed to run its own branches. That was important because it made large consumer markets possible. With the Interspar large areas, consumption was countered with its KGM. Competition intensified further in the 1970s when the German discount chain Aldi took over Helmut Hofer’s stores in Austria. Lidl started in 1997. Since then, however, the focus has been on the duel between Spar and Rewe (Merkur, Billa).
Siegfried Wild retired in 1975 as head of the Spar regional headquarters, which had meanwhile been set up in Marchtrenk. With his wife Monika he concentrated on the textile and jewelery trade in Linz.
Son Marcus joined Spar AG management in 1995, like the offspring of other Spar shareholder families (Drexel, Reisch, Poppmeier, Staudinger, …). Marcus Wild was head of the Interspar rail, then the shopping center company SES. He has been on the board of Spar AG since last year.
Siegfried Wild followed the success of the savings organization with interest, which in 2020 replaced the Rewe Group as the market leader in Austria’s food retail sector. His favorite hobby was sailing on the Attersee, says his son Marcus: “He did it for contemplation.” Together with his wife Monika, the three sons and their families mourn the loss of the deceased.
Spar Austria AG is still a company owned by several families. In the group with the subsidiaries in Italy and Eastern/Southeastern Europe, it has a turnover of around 17 billion euros with around 90,000 employees. The group also includes the sporting goods retailer Hervis.
Source: Nachrichten
