Can 14,000 Stores Innovate as One Network? SPAR's CEO Explains | CGF 2026

Hello, everyone.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I am Chris Walden, and we are coming to you live once again from the Consumer Goods Forum Global Summit in Vienna, Austria.

And we are of course, also recording this from the CGF Leadership Studio, which is sponsored by Vuzion.

Now, joining me, very excited about this next interview.

Joining me is Tobias Washmuth, the CEO and Managing Director at Spar International.

How did I do there, Tobias?

Did I say that right?

Chris is pretty good.

Thank you very much.

To be as a.

Was a German.

Yes.

It's not easy to roll off the tongue, but you did very well.

Thank you, man.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Appreciate that.

Not sure I believe you, but I appreciate it.

All right, so tell our audience.

Tell our audience about.

I want to hear about yourself, your career history, and also specifically about Spar International.

Okay.

Well, thank you very much for the invitation to do this.

I'm happy to share.

So, as I just explained, my name is German, so I was born in Germany.

But you can hear hopefully from also the accent.

I grew up in the United Kingdom.

Okay.

Yes, I was wondering about that.

So I'm grew up bilingually.

That explains a little bit about my career because I started my first role in the industry was actually working for English chewing gum out in UN in the now part of Mars.

But that was the early days.

Wow, exciting days.

It's just the early 90s.

What year was this in the early 90s?

Okay.

The Berlin Wall had come down, Europe had opened up, and Rigdish Chewingham was going on trucks into the central Eastern Europe.

And that's how I then was picked up by Marks and Spencer.

Okay.

Because they were looking to enter into the German market at the time.

There's a German guy, speaks English, has some experience.

Finance was my background.

Got it.

So I was with Marks and Spencer and I had a great time there.

And store roles, regional roles, marketing director for the Germany, the Benelux.

Okay.

And then I joined SPA in the summer of 2000.

So 26 years with SPA International.

26 Years.

Wow.

26 Years.

And.

But the unique thing about SPA, it's always different.

So today, SPA is in 50 countries.

We have a global turnover of 50.9 billion euros.

Big 13 and a half thousand stores or more and growing with a growing presence.

And Spa is a Dutch brand, Dutch heritage.

We started in 1932.

The name I need to explain Spa.

Yeah, I've always wondered that, actually.

Well, here you go.

Yeah, here we go.

So it's in German.

It means to save.

Okay.

That's actually not the origin, the origins comes from its founding mission.

Okay.

Which is in Dutch, do en rachte zamenwerken profiteren all regamartech, which translates into English for the viewers, is working together.

S zammenwerken P profetieren benefit A Allen everyone hegel mate sustainably.

So by working together, allshore benefit.

Okay.

And we talk about that today in the sense of better together.

Yeah.

Which is about uniting the economies of scale, the human resources, the human capital, the economic capital for ensuring that to create advantages for our countries which can then operate together collaboratively, internationally, but maintain their independence.

Got it, got it.

And now can you touch on the structure too underneath, you know, in terms of how all the stores are operating by country too?

Because I think that's going to be a key piece of this interview for everyone to understand.

I think we are very unique in that sense.

So, and I will give you maybe a couple of examples because it's not a uniform structure globally.

We adapt and we evolve in different markets internationally over a period of time.

We find ourselves today here in Vienna, in Austria.

And that's a very key market because here in Austria we have 37.1% market share, market leader.

Our store structure here is, yes, we have a lot of independent retailers, independently owned and operated.

About 50% of the stores are under there, but the other 50% are company owned, which are owned by the families who are the original investors and developers of spa.

And those company stores would be larger hypermarkets, Intersper, Eurospar, but also Spa, Spa Gourmet, and they would be about 75% of the turnover.

Okay, so that's structure.

If you go to our second largest market on the other side of the world, into South Africa where we have 7.5 billion euro turnover, close 127% market share of the modern trade market, then all of our stores, 100%, well, 96% of our stores, the 4% are corporate stores for a period of time before they are again then put in the hands of independent retailers.

So our structure historically was that SPA was brought together as wholesalers who would unite together under one common brand, bring in the retailers to work together on a common identity to share those economies of scale, share the benefits, be part of a larger group, maintain their independence.

But over time, as we had to compete against different retail and different markets, we also invested then into our own larger format company owned divisions.

And that's therefore we have quite a agility in adapting to the different markets internationally in that sense.

And therefore, while there is the Heritage would have been pure independent retailers today will find a hybrid of independent together with company owned stores, multi formats from 80 square meters to 8,000 square meter stores and online multi channel at the same time.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

So there's a wide range of activity going on in your organization, like large country differences, size differences, particularly in terms of the size of the stores as well and the formats too.

So, so that's really.

So that's why I wanted to make sure.

And you did a great job covering that too.

So thank you for that take.

Thank you for taking the time to do that.

So the reason I wanted to ask you that specifically was the theme of this conference is the Adaptive Edge.

That's the theme.

Right.

And that's about how do we accelerate particularly around AI as a collective retail and CPG community.

So I'm curious, as you think about that key message here, how does it translate to an organization like yours that is structured like that?

How do you.

What are some of the different puts and takes you have to work through?

Perfect for us.

You.

Perfect for you.

Yeah.

Because if you look at the structure, you have to look at SPA as a network far reaching, with many notes.

Okay.

Interconnected with different businesses.

And if I take our international breadth, we reach from the southern tip of Australia, east coast of China, to the very circle of Norway.

Right.

To the.

To the west coast, the violent global.

Right.

And we have all these different businesses at different phases of development and evolution.

And we always say that if there is a challenge within the business, what we can do is use the center where SPA International is to connect to solutions that have already been trialled and tested in other markets to bring that adaption then back home.

And that works just as much in the world of technology.

And often actually technology is some of the best examples in that because certain countries historically maybe have also been advanced.

If I take into the give you some practical examples.

Most recently, if you're looking at automation in distribution and supply chain and the use of AI technologies in that sense, maybe for us one of the leaders would maybe in the Nordics, in Norway, where we have obviously labor cost structures are very different to the rest of Europe.

So we have evolved and maybe in AGVs and automation at a much faster pace than other parts of the world.

Most recently we've seen the tremendous growth and development and digitalization in China.

Now spa.

I spent 10 years of my career developing and growing SPA in China.

China.

I was previously managing director there and I'm obviously very close to the developments and particularly I would Say post Covid the acceleration that we've seen in China, the digital transformation allows us which we recently did together with the cgf.

Also in terms of the sprints is to go out to China, visit China, shop, engage with the key leading technology suppliers in the market, utilize the own experiences from our businesses there to share that learning them back to other organizations that maybe are exploring, looking and for solutions.

So to answer, to be very specific to your question, we use a network, okay.

Of trial.

So there's a lot of hype.

But what we seek to do is to find actual examples of use cases that have been successful in one market and then to bring that back and to then to interconnect this technology.

I'll give you one more example, then I'll go from here.

So back to Norway.

Labor costs very high.

We've been really developing autonomous stores.

Okay.

And the autonomous stores in such a way is actually we've taken the actual physical store which is existing stores and then created a hybrid autonomous which means after a certain time of day it's only it's self serve shopping accessibility.

That technology is very affordable in terms of how our Norwegian colleagues have developed it together with their technology partners which allows us to take the business case, the ROI and immediately apply it and then bring it into a new market like for example Iceland where we just recently launched.

So that's kind of how we work in our network, adaptive network.

Got it.

That makes it.

I mean that makes sense.

So my next question then around that is like how does the innovation end up happening?

Does it come bottoms up then or is it top down based on what you see and then you kind of share it outwards?

Both, both.

So I mean you have innovation trends being led coming out of one particular market which is then picked up by the central team.

We don't really have top down or bottom up.

It's more like we have a central.

You do you have a central function.

Okay, so we have a central resource that's Power International, okay.

And then we have our collaborative network and then through the network we pull that together and through that center point we can then expedite it.

Same through being members of CGF and the activities that we have within the CGF and the involvement that we have, we may see new trends and developments that we want to bring back into the organization.

We then structure our countries groups into expert pools.

So we bring together the leading lights maybe in data science together to then develop and expedite those trends with them or bring that in logistics, supply chain, AI, automation so these what we call sort of Sprint working groups by multicultural members of the different countries coming together.

Okay, got it.

So the other part that I think is what's.

It's.

It's not, it's.

It's germane to the discussion is data.

You know, how do you coordinate data when you are running so many disparate organizations around the world too?

What's your approach there?

Well, I think the, what we've learned actually is the ability of being able to add value to our countries through SPA Data services.

SPA Data Services is a central data consultancy.

Okay.

SPA that undertakes projects on behalf of the the countries which again is moving best practices and processes be that starting taking our first party data and analyzing that to get much better take on for example store format, cluster analysis, shopping basket, affinity, pricing, promotion, effectiveness and having run those, those type of data projects with a number of countries, you start to develop a standardized approach.

Right.

And also a way of structuring the data and learning.

So it's possible for our teams who do not speak a word of Mandarin to run data projects with Chinese partner data in the same structure that would run the same type of analysis.

Maybe an island, same structure, same format.

And it's a question of their capacity building and onboarding that.

So that's been a game changer for us.

It's been really fundamental of how we look at the business, how we look in terms of our strategic development and also how we partner with key brands.

Because obviously the insights that we have gives us a very competitive and well, compelling information which we can share on a strategic basis with our strategic partners.

Right, right.

Wow, that's a. Yeah, that's brilliant.

That's brilliantly said.

So the other interesting thing that I think that I find about that conversation is you are also the CGF board sponsor of the data driven value chain industry solution, which is a lot to say, but you are the sponsor and it sounds like you're the perfect guy for that given what you just described.

But why did you sign up for that?

Well, I, I signed up because we've had an involvement in the value chain and development of that.

One of our key members, Tom Rose as a co chair and as a co chair and the involvement that we've had in digital and data and value chain over time we've seen obviously the growth and the importance of that within all of the discussions that we're having here as an industry most recently, if we bring it to where we are today in Vienna the last couple of days is obviously AI Cybersecurity and these are top of mind issues at CEO level which is very.

Oh yeah for the organizations and this cross functional and bringing together manufacturers and retailers.

I've been part of CGF and its predecessor CIES for over 20 years.

I truly believe in the spirit of collaboration.

I explained how we work at spa.

Right.

So it mirrors, so we feel very comfortable and this type of collaborative and pre competitive way of collaboration and therefore for me it was logical with the expertise that Tom Rose has as being one of the co chairs and together with his colleagues which is represented by PepsiCo and Mondelez and we have Migroth Turkey also there that as a retailer we want to work together with the fellow coaches and other members of the industry to seek to find solutions.

Which is back to your question about standardization, utilization of data.

How can we develop solutions for the industry which benefits all which is.

I think the President this morning outlined perfectly well of the importance of standards.

Right.

Where you know, be that a container, shipping container and that's what this coalition and this is what our focus is on.

Yeah, Scott Price and I were talking about the same thing this morning.

Yeah, I mean you sound, you come across like a person that likes to eat what he cooks, so to speak is how it said that in the U.S. you know, in terms of like, you know, knowing how it works and then trying to make sure that everyone's doing it and is on the same page with it.

Couple more questions here.

So the intelligent data hub idea, you know, the store being an intelligent hub of data, how far are we from seeing say the smallest independent retailers from being able to actualize that idea in concept?

We're seeing some of the bigger enterprise guys start to do it, start to explore it, start to pepper the edges with it.

How far are we from seeing it across retail?

I think the interesting thing is about the word independent doesn't necessarily mean small.

True, true, true.

Right.

Because I'm the true.

I also represent, I'm the president of Independent Retail Europe.

Yeah.

And that's an association which is represented by some of the key retailers.

Actually the winning retailers.

Yeah.

From France, Leclerc, Inter, Marche, Copper, Tivu, Finland, Casco, you got Edika, River.

All of Those are top one, two or three positions in the markets.

Kona, SpA, ECA in Sweden.

So some very major players.

They're all independent retailers.

Now if you look at the players I've mentioned there, including ourselves, spa, but you also look some of those other key retailers whilst they're structured, maybe with independent retail ownership because the same way that we are structured by integrating.

Creating this collaborative might make it easier.

It does, yeah.

And therefore we look at the use of also AI in this space as an enabler, an accelerator.

Call that.

Yep.

And in terms of an.

In what did you say?

Intelligent.

Intelligent data hubs.

I love all this.

Yeah, right.

The smart store.

The smart store, the intelligent data hub, whatever you want to call it, choose your vernacular.

The key point of this, the store is the point of execution.

It's the point of moment of transaction sale where first party data, so that's always to call it intelligent or whatever that has been historically the point.

So obviously that's the position as retailers and the owners of stores and having networks of stores.

It's about in terms of structuring data and being able to pull that back together to then make intelligent analysis of the data.

And I thought also we had a good example of that today from Molina, maybe coming out of as Watson of how they're not only doing the data analysis from it, but utilizing now the technology to give actually and promote solutions in terms of the data.

So not just show me what the data means, but show me what actions I need to do in terms of inventory, out of storage, etc.

And that is coming back to what I was saying about enablers and accelerators.

This helps retailers, also retailers maybe, which may be considered as independents.

It levels the playing field more.

If you go back 20 years, maybe the big guys could invest in big data centers in Bangalore and have a thousand guys sitting behind computers and doing Google churning.

And we weren't in the position to do that.

We don't need a thousand people in Bangalore churning data anymore.

We have first party data.

We need a selective, smart bunch of teams who can pull that together.

You can use technology to accelerate and to give us decisions, which helps our ultimate goal, which is helps our retailers make more money, be more productive and be more competitive.

Because it's extremely competitive out there at the moment in the market for an independent retailer because of cost pressures that we feel as an industry with rising minimum wages, where the squeeze that we're seeing in terms of the margin pressures, declining EBITDA across the industry because of the growth of OPEX costs.

So that data helps us to get those few percentage points.

That doesn't look just good on the analysts sheets, but it looks, it's a question of matter of life and death for a family owned independent retail business.

Data helps them to be more competitive against the big guys.

Yeah.

So you see AI as the equalizer then in the long term, right?

You know.

Yeah.

And those.

And even if the smaller guys.

The smaller guys are probably the ones that are closer to their consumer too in understanding them.

And so therefore they actually potentially have the.

You've got to stop saying the smaller guys.

No, I'm just.

Well, I'm just saying like.

But there are small guys out there.

There are.

Right.

But I'm saying like the small guys that are out there, it actually, it's something I never thought about before.

Like it actually gives them the lever to do things that they couldn't do before.

You know, in addition to the larger independent retailers too.

I mean, use cases in AI if you look.

I mean, some of the most practical ones is in the past if you want some of the marketing materials that were being created.

Right.

Huge budgets, agencies, and the cost was so prohibitive.

You saw our friends from l' Oreal show their example of how they quickly co created using AI campaign.

Right.

Well, we're doing that.

And it allows even an independent retailer to take a local regional product, utilize technology with guidelines to allow them to be able to create content at zero cost, at speed, which makes it relevant to their market, to be more personalized and more adaptive.

So that's really, I think, where this unlocks opportunity.

Then you could do that with anything.

You could do that with your pricing strategy.

You could do that with anything.

All right, well, let's get you out of here on this.

What.

So with that being your board assignment, what does success look like for you at the end of your board assignment in terms of trying to consolidate and bring all the data together across the industry?

Board assignment.

What do you mean from the cgf?

Yeah, the CGF board assignment.

Well, my board assignment from the CGF is at the moment is we are restructuring our approach obviously and evolving the function of the ddvc.

Okay.

And that is obviously the function that we have at the moment is to focus on use cases and applicability.

Okay.

And less on, let's say on the hype, but on actually looking at solutions that as we heard today, that can make a difference and at pace and quickly.

So to start with that, the structure needs to be there, the standardization needs to be there regarding to the data, we need to find also the interoperability between the different functions.

There's obviously a big focus at the moment from our board.

The CGF in interest.

AI and cyber security would be two big call outs.

The knowledge that we have in that space in the industry is ever expanding.

And the call at the moment is to bring that together, cut through what is Actually adding value today.

What is showing promise for the future and to get the teams in a pre competitive environment to be able to share that and to develop standards around that.

And that's what the co chairs have been driving all along.

Continue to drive.

And I think now following this summit we're going to see much more activity, even more from the coming out now, but from the DDBC.

So you know, I always hear that from CEOs like yourselves, you know, talking and it sounds so intuitive and so straightforward.

But yet what are the roadblocks like?

What's the biggest roadblock that prevents it from happening?

I think at the moment roadblocks would be that it's an ever moving feast in terms of.

There is also.

There's another roadblock.

There is focus required which is very difficult because there's so much opportunities and everybody's chasing different parts.

And then there's also.

I think there's a lot of different players also within the areas of consultancies and looking to take the lead.

So everybody's a constituency issue.

Well, everybody's vying to, to drive this forward.

That's positive.

I see that.

Positive.

There's a lot of energy and everybody's wants to get involved behind it.

But that can also create like a bit of a start of a Formula one race.

Right.

You're in a bit of chaos before you understand which direction we have to go.

So we have to work through that together.

The Consumer Goods Forum.

Work together in the partnership that's underlying this organization and the success it has.

And I'm confident we can do that.

And I think coming out of it we will have real added value not only to the members, the manufacturers and the retailers, but ultimately we'll do better as an industry delivering for our customers.

Yeah.

So it sounds like you need strong wranglers.

That's the word I'd use.

You need guardrails and all of this.

The buzzwords that one would use.

But I think common sense.

Common sense.

Common sense and CEO participation.

Yeah.

To basically just make sure, let's keep moving.

And I think that is one of the.

That's probably the biggest positive.

In my time in the cgf I have probably rarely seen one area that has so much focus than ever before in terms of technology and the transformation that is making the industry.

Do you think that's particularly true of Europe?

Because that's one thing I found.

I've been doing this business for eight years when I come over to Europe, the CEOs in Europe talk about data and data strategy much More so than I ever hear about it in the US particularly.

I wouldn't agree with that because interestingly we don't have stores in the US But I go over to the United States regularly because we're members of FMI.

Yeah.

So I sit with the CEOs of the businesses in the United States and there'll be some key independent operators and players there, but some of them being a very big businesses there as well, large players, the likes of the H. E.B.S.

And you know, but also some of the maybe lesser known but regional players, strong business like Dorothy Lane Markets.

Right.

Dayton, Ohio.

Yep.

But if you talk to the, you know, from the very large biggest guys in Texas to you know, the regional superb specialists of Ohio.

Yeah.

They're all focusing on data.

Okay.

They're all talking about the important seller and most recently the board meeting I was at the midwinter, we dedicated also a lot of period of time onto cybersecurity and technology.

So I would say I see the parity and I see the parity also in the communications that we've been having here with US and North American retailers, manufacturers as well as with with the European companies.

So I think the world is all focused on this.

Yeah, well, and AI is helping to spur that too.

Right.

You know, and so, and I think.

Another part in this I know is China.

How so?

Well, in terms of if we used to talk, we used to go to China to share knowledge and technology to help our businesses and our independently family owned businesses that were growing in China who had to compete against the Walmarts, compete against the Metros, compete against the Aeons, had to compete against these big boxes to help them by sharing with them technologies and how SPA operates.

Now it's reversed because we're talking about data technology and so forth, the learnings that we are getting and this global retail comes back.

So they're acting as helping now shape our strategies internationally.

Yeah, we just had Meng Nu on talking about one product, one barcode for example, that highlights what you just said.

Very good.

Well, thank you very much.

This was a real pleasure.

Chris.

Yeah, it's really great chat and retail with you and technology and the future and how we should look at everything.

So I appreciate it very much.

So thank you Tobias and thank you to Evusion and CGF for enabling us to provide great interviews with folks like Tobias here.

And as always, on behalf of all of us at Omnitalk, be careful out there.