Wayne Chen, CEO of Super Plus. - File

Susan Gordon, Business Reporter

The Super Plus Food Stores grocery chain, owned by the Chen family, has given up on its short sojourn into the market for housewares, saying it was opting to return to core business.

Super Plus, which claims 40 per cent of the supermarket business in Jamaica, has now put up for sale the 24,000 square-foot building at Clock Tower Plaza, in Half-Way Tree, St. Andrew, that housed its Home Store.

The site formerly housed a Homelectrix furniture store, one of the businesses that had fallen into debtand had been taken over by FINSAC, and later wound up under receivership. Wayne Chen, Super Plus chief executive officer, said the acquisition cost the group about $70 million to $80 million.

The Home Store was opened in December 2004, in high shopping season, stocked with furniture and housewares.

The directors felt a store selling household goods would be a complement to its grocery operation, given that several of the 30 stores in the chain carried similar stock, and would generate higher margins.

Consolidation exercise

Saying the store's closure was part of its consolidation exercise - the Super Plus group announced last year that it would reorganise its operations to bring the individually-owned stores into a single holding company - CEO Chen noted that sales had been good at that location.

"That store was doing well," he said. "But management is moving its focus on our core business which is the supermarket. They are looking at the cost benefits."

Housewares represent a 'small' percentage of the group's $12 billion annual turnover, said Chen adding, however, that the earnings were not insignificant.

But as Chen pointed out, Super Plus has two supermarkets in the Half-Way Tree area - one at the Pavilion Shopping Centre and the other next door to Clock Tower - where its customers can buy the same items, except for furniture.

In the meantime, the company could have stripped itself of the overheads, staff and other operating costs associated with the Home Centre, he said, but declined comment on the savings expected.

"We are rechannelling the items into the supermarkets," he said, except, he noted, the large furniture items.

Much of the items in inventory, he told Wednesday Business, were sold in several weekend sales ahead of the lockdown.

About 16 of the employees from the Home Store was absorbed into other areas of the business.

susan.gordon@gleanerjm.com