Spartan names Eidson CEO, moves forward with restructuring plan

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. Spartan Stores on Wednesday announced the addition of Dennis Eidson to position of president and chief executive officer, pursuant to the succession plan previously announced Aug. 7. Eidson succeeds former chief executive officer Craig Sturken, who will remain as executive chairman.

“I am extremely pleased to announce this important step in our company’s succession plan,” Sturken said. “Dennis is the right individual to lead our organization forward. He has been instrumental in developing, guiding and executing the business strategies that produced record fiscal 2008 profits and 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit operating earnings growth. He was also the chief architect behind our very successful marketing, merchandising and category management strategies that strengthened our market position and sustained our business performance.

“Our long-standing objective has been to achieve profitable growth through a balanced combination of organic growth supplemented by prudent acquisitions,” Eidson said. “Our recently announced acquisition of VG’s Food and Pharmacy is our third significant retail acquisition of an independent operator in less than three years. We have successfully integrated the first two retail acquisitions, improving the sales and efficiency of these operations, and becoming increasingly adept at the integration process and optimizing value from the acquired operations. In addition, we remain the exit strategy of choice for many of our distribution customers’ retail operations. In the near-term, we will concentrate efforts on integrating our latest acquisition and driving organic growth through our capital investment program.”