Supermarket Direct was a pioneering

online grocer An online grocer is either a brick-and-mortar supermarket or grocery store that allows online ordering, or a standalone e-commerce service that includes grocery items. There is usually a delivery charge for this service. Brick-and-mortar supermark ...

, providing a home grocery shopping and delivery service in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

from October 1995. The company sold

Sainsbury's J Sainsbury plc, trading as Sainsbury's, is the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, with a 14.6% share of UK supermarket sales. Founded in 1869 by John James Sainsbury with a shop in Drury Lane, London, the company wa ...

-provided groceries until it was bought by

Somerfield Somerfield (; originally Gateway) was a chain of small to medium-sized supermarkets operating in the United Kingdom. The company also previously owned the Kwik Save chain of discount food stores. The company was taken over by the Co-operative ...

and integrated into the Somerfield Direct home shopping service.

History

Supermarket Direct was founded by

Adrian Flanagan Adrian Flanagan (born 1 October 1960 in Nairobi, Kenya) is a British author, sailor and sculptor. On 21 May 2008, Flanagan achieved the first ever single-handed vertical circumnavigation (via the geographical poles) of the globe A globe i ...

and Dominick Scott-Flanagan, and launched in October 1995. The deal with Sainsbury's made Sainsbury's the first major grocery store in the UK to provide home shopping. At the launch, customers could select from a catalogue of 1,700 proprietary branded groceries, and telephone or fax their order to a call centre. Orders received before 6pm could be delivered within a two-hour period the following day. Following a relaunch in 1996 a further 800 Sainsbury's-branded groceries were added to the catalogue, and by November 1998 over 4,000 products were available including Flanagan's

own label 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. Delivery was charged for, initially at £4, later at £5. Running a small fleet of 12 vans, by the start of 1997 the company had 5,000 regular customers and was taking 170 orders per day.

bought Supermarket Direct in April 1999 for £3.25 million, and Supermarket Direct partners Dominick Scott-Flanagan and David Noble joined the ''Somerfield Direct'' board. At the time ''Somerfield Direct'' only covered the South West of England from its base in Bristol. With the incorporation of Supermarket Direct, ''Somerfield Direct'' extended its range to the London area.

References

{{reflist Online grocers Retail companies established in 1995 Online retailers of the United Kingdom