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ALDI is an international discount supermarket chain based in Germany. It is actually two separate companies, but is commonly referred to as one. The company's name stands for Albrecht-Discount, using the founders' last name. more...

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Historically, Aldi is said to have been Germany's first real discount supermarket. In 2006, its chain of over 5000 supermarkets with low prices on a limited range of goods can be found in sixteen countries with global revenue of 37 billion dollars (29.3 billion euro). The name Aldi is not used in all the markets it operates, in Austria and Slovenia the company trades under the Hofer brand.

History

The company was founded in 1948 by the brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in Essen, Germany. Initially it comprised only one small food shop.

In 1961, the then-Aldi chain of supermarket stores split into two sister companies (each belonging to one of the brothers). It is generally believed this occured over a dispute whether to sell cigarettes and other tobacco products at the checkout, but the size of the company seemed an important factor as well. Thus today, Aldi consists of Aldi Nord (Aldi North owned by Theo) (where tobacco sales were deemed to be acceptable) and Aldi Süd (Aldi South owned by Karl) (where they were not; however Aldi Süd began selling tobacco products in 2003). The chains initially covered the respective different regions of the then-West Germany. The companies have since expanded internationally, into other European, North American, and Australian markets. In principle, since 1966, the two firms share nothing but the name and a similar corporate identity; however, they describe their relationship as a "friendly alliance" and there appear to be agreements between the two insofar that they do not compete directly with each other and (with the exception of Germany) never both operate in the same countries.

Geographic distribution

Aldi Nord operates in

Northern Germany; Belgium; Denmark; France; Luxembourg; The Netherlands; Poland (coming soon); Portugal: 5 stores opened June 29, 2006; Spain;

Aldi Süd operates in

Southern Germany; Australia (In Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and ACT); Austria (as Hofer); Ireland; Slovenia (as Hofer); Switzerland; United Kingdom; USA;

In-store description

Aldi specialises in staple items such as food, beverages, sanitary articles and other inexpensive household items. Many of its products are own-brand labelled, with the number of outside brands being very limited, usually no more than two different brands for one kind of product and often only one. This increases the numbers of sales for each article and also allows Aldi stores to be smaller than supermarkets which cover the same range of products but with more diversity. Also it allowed Aldi to avoid the use of price tags even before the introduction of barcode scanners (see below).

Read more at Wikipedia.org