William Low

William Low & Co plc

Wm Low store in Whitehaven, Cumbria (1994)
Industry	Retail
Founded	1868
Founder	James Low William Low William Rettie
Defunct	2 September 1994
Fate	Taken over by Tesco
Successor	Tesco
Headquarters	Dundee, Scotland, UK
Key people	Philip Rettie Ian Stewart James Millar[1]
Products	Groceries
Number of employees	8,981[2]
Subsidiaries	Lowfreeze McTatties

William Low & Co plc, popularly referred to as Willie Low's and latterly marketed as Wm Low,^[3][4] was a chain of supermarkets headquartered in Dundee, Scotland. Initially founded in 1868, Low's had branches throughout Scotland, North East England, Cumbria and Yorkshire. As a group, it was smaller than most of its competitors and often served small towns, although it still had several large hypermarkets.^[5] Low's use to trade on their Scottishness as a unique selling point in Scotland.^[6] At one stage, the company also ran a chain of frozen food stores known as Lowfreeze.^[6] Lowfreeze was sold in 1987 to Bejam.

The remaining business was purchased by Tesco for £257M in 1994. Tesco had to compete with rival competitor Sainsbury's for the chain, with both companies looking to expand their foothold in Scotland. Following on from the takeover, the 57 William Low stores were converted to Tesco. Prior to this, there were only around 17 Tesco branches in Scotland. The purchase of Wm Low by Tesco moved them to the largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom, beating Sainsbury's for the first time.^[7]