C1000 was a Dutch supermarket chain. Founded on 1 April 1977, the chain had 500 stores in 2012, with a market share of 12.1%. The supermarket chain operated in a rather unusual manner for supermarkets in the Netherlands, using the franchise system. C1000 often found itself in competition with

Albert Heijn Albert Heijn is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with a market share of 34.8% in 2020. It was founded in 1887, and has been part of Ahold Delhaize since 2016. History The chain was founded on 27 May 1887, when Albert Heijn boug ...

, the largest Dutch supermarket chain. Until 2008 however, C1000's parent company Schuitema was owned by

Royal Ahold Koninklijke Ahold N.V. was a Dutch multinational retail company based in Zaandam, Netherlands. It merged with Belgium-based Delhaize Group in 2016 to form Ahold Delhaize. History Growth in the Netherlands The company started in 1887, when Al ...

, Albert Heijn's parent company. In 2008 Ahold sold its shares to

CVC Capital Partners CVC Capital Partners is a Luxembourg-based French private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately US$133 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, E ...

. In September 2011, CVC announced that they were looking for a buyer for the company now renamed to C1000 BV. CVC received bids from several groups: Jumbo Supermarkten, Sligro Food Group, Edeka and Sperwer Group. On 23 November 2011, it was announced that Jumbo would take over the C1000 stores, with the exception of a select few that had to be sold to other groups due to competition regulations. Owing to the acquisition, Jumbo became the second-largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands, after Albert Heijn. The C1000 formula was used by Jumbo Supermarkten until 2015 when C1000 shops were re-branded under the Jumbo formula; at the time there were still 252 supermarkets using the C1000 formula across the country.

History

First C1000 in Dokkum

Supermarket owner Germ Kloosterman from

Dokkum Dokkum is a Dutch fortified city in the municipality of Noardeast-Fryslân in the province of Friesland. It has 12,669 inhabitants (February 8, 2020). The fortifications of Dokkum are well preserved and are known as the ''bolwerken'' (bulwarks). ...

experimented with the first C1000 in the year 1977. At the time there were many competitors in Dokkum, which is the reason why Germ Kloosterman wanted to set up a store that could compete with them by offering lower prices. His initial shop belonged to the Centra formula, which belonged to Schuitema, but he was allowed to try a new formula for a period of two years and if the results of his experiment were disappointing, he could return to the old formula. The initial C1000 store was expanded from 100 square meters to 650 square meters by moving into the adjacent building. The store opened on 1 April 1977. Its name was derived from the term "Calculatie-1000" ("Calculation 1000"), which referred to the promotion of giving a fixed low price for a thousand items in the new store.Dokkumer kruidenier jubileert met geesteskind C1000
12 April 2002, Dagblad van het Noorden

Expansion during the 1980s

A second pilot store was opened in

Wolvega Wolvega ( nds, Wolvege), ( fry, Wolvegea) is the largest town in the municipality of Weststellingwerf in the province of Friesland (Fryslan), in the Netherlands. It had a population of around 13,090 in 2021. Wolvega is the capital and largest town ...

on 6 November 1980, but it wasn't until 1981 that the C1000-Voordeelmarkt formula was fully developed.Centra Van de Wijgert sluit laatste deur supermarkt
Nieuwsbank.nl, 1 december 2001 Because the formula wasn't fully developed before 1981, this year is officially considered to be the founding year of C1000.Yenom
C1000 SUPERMARKT
Retrieved: 15 August 2021 (in Dutch). Most new C1000-branded supermarkets were franchises.

Products

As of 2012 C1000 had over 2000 different

house brand A private label, also called a private brand or private-label brand, is a brand owned by a company, offered by that company alongside and competing with brands from other businesses. A private-label brand is almost always offered exclusively by th ...

products including both A-brand and B-brand products. C1000 issued magazines named ''Voordeelstraat'' and ''Voordeelplein'' which displayed the (temporarily) discounted and bargain products it was selling. Furthermore, at the beginning of every year C1000 would announce a hundred products that would cost

€ The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...

1,- for the duration of the year.

C1000 Museum

It was reported in 2014 that a 22-year-old man named Gerard Marsman, who was a collector of C1000-related items and paraphernalia, wished to establish a museum dedicated to soon to disappear supermarket formula. Marsman was an employee of a C1000 since 2005, this C1000 was later rebranded as an

. His collection started when in 2006 he received a C1000 banner and by 2014 the entire attic and his bedroom of his parents' house were filled with C1000-related objects. In 2015 it was announced that he could open a museum dedicated to C1000 in the village of Hellendoorn,

Overijssel Overijssel (, ; nds, Oaveriessel ; german: Oberyssel) is a Provinces of the Netherlands, province of the Netherlands located in the eastern part of the country. The province's name translates to "across the IJssel", from the perspective of the ...

. The collection of the museum includes products sold by the C1000, shopping bags, banners, clothing, and other articles. Opening was on 17 December 2023.Hobby loopt beetje uit de hand: Gerard uit Hellendoorn opent zijn eigen C1000 Museum
''RTV Oost'' (in Dutch) (18 December 2023)

References

External links

* (now redirects to Jumbo's website) {{Supermarkets in the Netherlands 1977 establishments in the Netherlands Retail companies established in 1977 Supermarkets of the Netherlands Franchises Defunct supermarkets of the Netherlands CVC Capital Partners companies