Dutch organisation ‘DESPAR’ was established in 1932 by entrepreneur Adriaan van Well. Just like the Co-op, DESPAR was founded on a close co-operation between retailers and wholesalers at a local level, with the intention of better meeting the needs of customers with products at affordable prices. The name, styled ‘De Spar’, was an expression of this mission, and an acronym (or ‘backronym’) of the slogan Door Eendrachtig Samenwerken Profiteren Allen Regelmatig. In English this translates as ‘everyone benefits from working regularly together’.
In the late 1940s the organisation’s name was changed from DE SPAR to simply SPAR. In 1947 Spar Central Office in the Netherlands was approached by a number of grocery wholesalers in Belgium for guidance on forming voluntary groups. With their help, Spar was launched in Belgium in 1948. Later, in 1954 Internationale Spar Centrale NV was set up in Amsterdam to co-ordinate further international expansion and in the following years another 14 other countries were expanded into. Spar could be found almost anywhere in Europe as well as in South Africa, Greece and Japan. It would eventually introduce over 4000 stores to the UK, making it somewhat ubiquitous to the British.
In 1966, with the intention of unifying all Spar’s activities under a common organisational image, it embarked on a corporate identity programme and hired renowned designer Raymond Loewy and his Parisian design studio Compagnie de l'Esthetique Industrielle (C.E.I.) who were also working with French Coop at the time.