Business features

“Michael and I had just joined a retail committee for the Food Group (in 1996),” said Champions IGA CEO, Brendon Goddard, of the first time he met his good friend and business partner, Michael Zervakis.

“We were both new, and were on the outer, so we got friendly. We started calling each other, sometimes three times a day, to talk about how our supermarkets were going. My wife thought I had a mistress!”

Crete-born Michael Zervakis, a former linesman for the SEC, established his Bacchus Marsh store in 1987. Gippsland-born Brendon Goddard, the former Business Manager of the Holmesglen College of TAFE, established his Boort-based store in 1986.

“Michael was good in liquor, I was bad in liquor,” Brendon said. “I was good in food, Michael was bad in food. We complemented each other. He came to Boort a couple of times and helped us improve our liquor section. I went down to Bacchus Marsh around once a month to help Michael out.”

Michael was based in the Melbourne suburb of Yarraville when he first bought into the supermarket business after discovering a near-completed Bacchus Marsh shopping complex for rent. “It was good luck,” Brendon said. “I think he flew by the seat of his pants there.”

A couple of years later, the Zervakis family moved from Yarraville to Bacchus Marsh to concentrate on the burgeoning new business.

“I thought the store’s liquor offer was brilliant, but the food was patchy,” Brendon said of Bacchus Marsh IGA’s early days. “We re-shelved the store, and increased the range dramatically. We improved the deli, adding cooked chooks. And the sales kept growing!

Brendon also attributes IGA Bacchus Marsh’s early success to its location in Darley – a relatively new suburb on the outskirts of town. The store’s two supermarket competitors were, and still are, based in the town centre.

“When I used to drive over to Michael’s house there were always new houses being built in the area,” Brendon said. “There are 7,000 people here now. Darley is a great community. Our Bacchus Marsh customers have been very vocal about the expansion. ‘When will it happen?’ they kept asking!”

The Darley-based store was first a Welcome Mart-branded store, then a Food Town-branded store, and finally came under the ‘IGA’ brand in 1999 to take advantage of IGA pamphlets and promotions.

“For the first time in (Australian) history there was the one independent supermarket brand to work under,” Brendon said. “Before IGA, independents had 10% of the market – now independents have 18%.”

Founded in America in 1926 as Independent Grocers Alliance, IGA was introduced to Australia in 1988 and was renamed to represent the Independent Grocers of Australia. Today, IGA is the world’s largest independent supermarket brand, representing more than 4,000 shops in 41 different countries.

Brendon sold the Boort store in 2002 when the two new ‘Champions IGA’ business partners decided to buy a store in Long Gully, near Bendigo.  “In December 1999, Long Gully was doing $120,000 a week, which we thought was a huge amount. Now it does $480,000 a week!”

Champions IGA now owns and operates six stores across Victoria. “We asked another IGA owner, Steve Shipp, who had Kangaroo Flat (near Bendigo), to come in with us in 2004,” Brendon said.

“In October 2006 we bought Heathcote, and in 2005 we purchased Geelong West and Gladstone Park. A store on Bourke Street in Melbourne will open in July 2007, and one in Caroline Springs will open in 2008. And we’re currently looking at three other sites.”

By 2004, IGA Bacchus Marsh had outgrown its original premises. “The shop was over-trading,” Brendon explained. “You normally work on $200 trading on per square metres, and it was trading on $280 on per square metres.

The store’s one quarter of the Darley shopping centre has expanded to three quarters, covering an area of 1,550 square metres. IGA Bacchus Marsh now shares the shopping centre with a fuel site, a chemist, a bakery and a hairdresser.

“We have 35 staff there now – there will be a crew of 70 by the time the new store is in full operation,” Brendon said. “It is a significant investment. The landlord is spending $1.2 million on renovations, and we’re spending $1.5 million inside the store. All up it is a $2.7 million investment.”

Now a director of a company which encompasses six supermarket sites and over 550 employees, Michael and his family moved to Bendigo in 2005 to be based in Champions IGA’s head office with the rest of the management team.

“Michael is my eyes and ears,” Brendon said. “He looks after liquor, cigarettes and Best Practice. Other than being a consumer himself, he just has a natural flair for the business.”