Lidl sales growth year-on-year in Great Britain 2014-2023
Lidl and the Schwarz Group
Lidl is a subsidiary of the German Schwarz Group. The discounter is the biggest contributor to the revenue of the family owned Schwarz Group. Lidl is deliberately not named after the Schwarz family. The goal was probably to avoid any relation to the term black market (Schwarzmarkt in German). Lidl was founded in 1973 and opened its first store in the UK in 1994.
The company on the UK market
It is not only sales but also revenues that have seen an increase over the past years in the UK. By 2021, Lidl surpassed a sales income of over 7.7 billion British pounds on the British market. Lidl is the 6th largest supermarket operating in the grocery market in the UK, with a market share of 7.7 percent as of August 2023. Aldi recently took over fourth place from Morrisons.