William Low

William Low (popularly referred to as Willie Low's; latterly marketed as Wm Low) was a chain of supermarkets based in Dundee, Scotland, until it was bought out by Tesco for £257M in 1994. As a group it was smaller than most of its competitors and often served small towns, although it still had several large supermarkets, including two in Dundee, and two in Perth. Most towns in the Tayside region had at least one large William Low store and it had branches throughout Scotland, North East England, Cumbria and Yorkshire. Tesco had to compete with a rival takeover bid from competitor J Sainsbury for the chain and, following the takeover, 57 of the William Low stores were converted to the Tesco fascia. Prior to this, there were only around 17 Tesco branches in Scotland. At one stage, the company also ran a chain of frozen food stores known as Lowfreeze. Lowfreeze was sold in 1987 to Bejam, with Bejam being sold to rival Iceland in 1989. History