SQL UPDATE all values in a field with appended string CONCAT not working

That's pretty much all you need:

mysql> select * from t;
+------+-------+
| id   | data  |
+------+-------+
|    1 | max   |
|    2 | linda |
|    3 | sam   |
|    4 | henry |
+------+-------+
4 rows in set (0.02 sec)

mysql> update t set data=concat(data, 'a');
Query OK, 4 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Rows matched: 4  Changed: 4  Warnings: 0

mysql> select * from t;
+------+--------+
| id   | data   |
+------+--------+
|    1 | maxa   |
|    2 | lindaa |
|    3 | sama   |
|    4 | henrya |
+------+--------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Not sure why you'd be having trouble, though I am testing this on 5.1.41

CONCAT with a null value returns null, so the easiest solution is:

UPDATE myTable SET spares = IFNULL (CONCAT( spares , "string" ), "string")