Spotlight Group Holdings Pty Ltd (SGH) is an Australian retail conglomerate and one of the country's largest

private companies A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in their respective listed markets. Instead, the company's stock is ...

. Its Spotlight Retail Group division operates fabric and craft store chain Spotlight, outdoor retailers

Anaconda Anacondas or water boas are a group of large boas of the genus ''Eunectes''. They are a semiaquatic group of snakes found in tropical South America. Three to five extant and one extinct species are currently recognized, including one of the l ...

and

Mountain Designs Mountain Designs is an outdoor clothing and equipment business based in Australia. They sell hiking, rockclimbing and general outdoor and recreational equipment. The company stocks a variety of international and local brands, as well as their ...

, and department store chain

Harris Scarfe Harris Scarfe is an Australian retailer that sells bed linen, kitchenware, homewares, electrical appliances and apparel. It was founded in 1849 in Adelaide, South Australia and has more than 50 stores nationally. In 2015, ownership of Harris Sc ...

. The first Spotlight store was established in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

in 1973 by brothers Morry Fraid and Ruben Fried.

History

Spotlight was established by brothers Morry Fraid and Ruben Fried, whose names were spelled differently due to a mistake by their teachers. They immigrated to Australia from Israel in 1956 with their parents, who established a fabric stall at the

Queen Victoria Market The Queen Victoria Market (also known colloquially as the Vic Market or Queen Vic) is a major landmark and public marketplace in the central business district (CBD) of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Covering over , it is the largest open air ...

. The first Spotlight store was opened in 1973 in Malvern. By 1990 there were 30 stores across Australia and the company was turning over about 90 million, with the brothers' net worth estimated by the ''

Australian Financial Review The ''Australian Financial Review'' (''AFR'') is an Australian compact daily newspaper with a focus on business, politics and economic affairs. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New South Wales, and has been published continuously since its foun ...

'' as about 30 million. Beginning in the late 1990s, Spotlight used

economic value added In accounting, as part of financial statements analysis, economic value added is an estimate of a firm's economic profit, or the value created in excess of the Required rate of return, required return of the types of companies, company's sharehol ...

as an internal metric to calculate employee bonuses. By 2006, Spotlight was employing 6,000 people and had a turnover of 600 million. It used the

Howard government The Howard government refers to the Government of Australia, federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister John Howard between 11 March 1996 and 3 December 2007. It was made up of members of the Liberal Party of Australia, Li ...

WorkChoices WorkChoices was the name given to changes made to the federal industrial relations laws in Australia by the Howard government#Fourth term: 2004–2007, Howard government in 2005, being amendments to the ''Workplace Relations Act 1996'' by the '' ...

legislation to entice its employees to accept

Australian workplace agreement An Australian workplace agreement (AWA) was a type of formalised individual agreement negotiated between an employer and employee in Australia that existed from 1996 to 2009. Employers could offer a "take it or leave it" AWA as a condition of empl ...

s with lower wage rates. In 2017, Spotlight was reportedly Australia's fifth-largest privately owned retailer, behind

7-Eleven 7-Eleven, Inc. is an American convenience store chain, headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, which in turn is owned by the retail holdings company Seven & I Holdings. The chain was founde ...

, the

Peregrine Corporation The Peregrine Corporation is an Australian privately-owned company headquartered in Adelaide, South Australia. It formed and until April 2023 operated the OTR (convenience store), On the Run brand of Filling station, service stations and conveni ...

Cotton On Group Cotton On Group is an Australian retail company known for its fashion, clothing and stationery brands. As of 2020, it has over 1,500 stores in 18 countries employing 22,000 people across eight brands: Cotton On, Cotton On Kids, Cotton On Body, ...

, and Peter Warren Automotive.

Expansion

Outside of Australia, Spotlight has stores in Singapore (1995), New Zealand (1996), and Malaysia (2014). In March 2018, Spotlight Group announced that it had acquired outdoor retailer

for an undisclosed sum. In March 2020, Spotlight Group was awarded the exclusive right to bid for

, a chain of department stores placed into voluntary administration in 2019. The sale proceeded for a reported $70 million. In March 2021, Zac Fried announced that Spotlight Group planned to open 50 new Harris Scarfe stores in order to compete against

Big W Big W (stylised as BIG W) is an Australian chain of discount department stores, which was founded in regional New South Wales in 1964. The company is a division of the Woolworths Group and as of 2024 operated 179 stores, with around 18,000 emp ...

and

Kmart Kmart ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and Territories of the United States, its territories. It operates four remaining Kma ...

Net worth

In 2021, ''

The Australian ''The Australian'', with its Saturday edition ''The Weekend Australian'', is a broadsheet daily newspaper published by News Corp Australia since 14 July 1964. As the only Australian daily newspaper distributed nationally, its readership of b ...

'' listed Morry Fraid and Zac Fried, a son of Reuben Fried, as the 30th and 31st richest people in Australia, with a

net worth Net worth is the value of all the non-financial and financial assets owned by an individual or institution minus the value of all its outstanding liabilities. Financial assets minus outstanding liabilities equal net financial assets, so net w ...

of 2.81

billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: * 1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the most common sense of the word in all varieties of ...

each. Meanwhile and in a contrasting assessment one month later, Morry Fraid, Zac Fried and family were listed on the ''Financial Review'' 2021 Rich List with a collective/joint net worth of 3.19 billion. , their net worth was assessed at 5.01 billion in the ''Financial Review'' 2025 Rich List.

Structure

Spotlight Group Holdings is divided into the Spotlight Property Group, managing the group's property portfolio; the Alara Investment Group, managing other investments; and the Spotlight Retail Group, which is divided into the brands of Spotlight, Anaconda, Mountain Designs, and Harris Scarfe.

References

External links

* {{Retailers in New Zealand Homeware retailers of New Zealand Homeware retailers of Australia Family-owned companies of Australia Australian companies established in 1973 Holding companies of Australia