British Supermarket Boss Corners Vuvuzela Market

The boss of Sainsbury's the second largest supermarket chain in the UK was blowing his own trumpet yesterday, literally, having cornered the market in sales of the now legendary Vuvuzela in South Africa.

Justin King, who has a holiday home in South Africa, saw these Vuvuzela in use when he went to a Kaiser Chiefs game out there at Christmas.

He asked his buyer how many Vuvuzela they were going to be stocking in time for the World Cup, only to be told "none". Fortunately the buyer jumped into action and ordered 75,000 Vuvuzelas. Apparently three weeks ago that looked like a huge quantity, but the stores in South Africa are expected to sell out of Vuvuzelas over the coming weekend.

For those who haven't seen the World up games in South Africa or heard the sound of thousands of meter long (3 foot) Vuvuzela trumpets blowing in unison, the sound has been likened to an extremely noisy hornets nest, and it is incredibly loud dangerously loud in fact.

In the UK, Sainsbury's latest financial results have shown the smallest rise in sales in the last five years, just 0.3% in the last 12 weeks, mostly attributed to the rising cost of fuel and a fall in food inflation.

Justin King, however, still claims to be "stealing market share" from the company's rivals, notable Tesco and Asda.

Sainsbury's is going ahead with plans to spend £1 billion on increasing store space, which will create 6,500 new jobs.

The trading figures were announced the day after those of main rival Tesco, which showed an even greater slowdown in sales, an increase of just 0.1% over the previous quarter.

The coming year in the UK will be an interesting one, with Sainsbury's adding 1.5 million square feet of store space, the same as Asda is expected to increase by when they buy the Netto chain.

This is good for the consumer in the UK, with new larger stores opening, since some cities have few of the newer supermarket stores, which means that shopping at prime times results in shoppers facing parking problems, as well as empty shelves and long queues at the checkouts.

Sources:

The Daily Mirror

Vuvuzela on Wikipedia