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Note 2 - Business and Organization
3 Months Ended
Jun. 30, 2011
Nature of Operations [Text Block]
2.           Business and Organization

SPAR Group is a diversified international merchandising and marketing services company and provides a broad array of services worldwide to help companies improve their sales, operating efficiency and profits at retail locations.  The Company provides its merchandising and other marketing services to manufacturers, distributors and retailers worldwide, primarily in mass merchandisers, office supply, grocery, drug store and other chains, and independent, convenience and electronics stores.  The Company also provides furniture and other product assembly services in stores, homes and offices.  The Company has supplied these project and product services in the United States since certain of its predecessors were formed in 1979 and internationally since the Company acquired its first international subsidiary in Japan in May of 2001.  Today the Company currently operates in 8 countries that encompass approximately 47% of the total world population through operations in the United States, Canada, Japan, South Africa, India, Romania, China and Australia.

Merchandising services primarily consist of regularly scheduled, special project and other product services provided at the store level, and the Company may be engaged by either the retailer or the manufacturer.  Those services may include restocking and adding new products, removing spoiled or outdated products, resetting categories "on the shelf" in accordance with client or store schematics, confirming and replacing shelf tags, setting new sale or promotional product displays and advertising, replenishing kiosks, providing in-store event staffing, and providing assembly services in stores, homes and offices.  Other merchandising services include whole store or departmental product sets or resets, including new store openings, new product launches and in-store demonstrations, special seasonal or promotional merchandising, focused product support and product recalls.  The Company continues to seek to expand its merchandising, assembly and marketing services business throughout the world.

In order to cultivate foreign markets and expand the Company's merchandising and marketing services business outside of the United States, modify the necessary systems and implement its business model worldwide, and insure a consistent approach to its merchandising and marketing efforts worldwide, and even though it operates in a single business segment (merchandising and marketing services), the Company has divided its world focus into two geographic areas, the United States, which is the sales territory for its Domestic Merchandising Services Division, and international (i.e., all locations outside the United States), which are the sales territories for its International Merchandising Services Division.  To that end, the Company also (1) provides and requires all of its locations to use its Internet based operating, scheduling, tracking and reporting systems (including language translations, ongoing client and financial reports and ongoing IT support), (2) provides and requires all of its locations to comply with the Company's financial reporting and disclosure controls and procedures, (3) provides accounting and auditing support and tracks and reports certain financial and other information separately for those two divisions, and (4) has management teams in its corporate offices responsible for supporting and monitoring the management, sales, marketing and operations of each of the Company's international subsidiaries and maintaining consistency with the Company's other subsidiaries worldwide.