Boxed.com is an American online and mobile membership-free wholesale retailer that offers direct delivery of bulk-sized packages via the Boxed app or the website. Boxed product offering has been compared to that of Costco. It is based in New York City and was founded in August 2013 by Chieh Huang, Jared Yaman, Christopher Cheung, and William Fong.

Boxed is headquartered in New York City, and has four fulfillment centers around the country: in New Jersey, Georgia, Nevada and Texas, which allow orders to be delivered within two days. The company also has a support office in San Mateo, California.

In 2016, Boxed was backed by $132 million in funding by investors including GGV Capital and DST Global.

In 2018, Boxed received $111 million in series D funding from Aeon Group, one of the largest retail chains in Japan, valuing the start-up at $600 million.

The economical situation in Europe is not helping the hard-discounters to keep the trend. Aldi France had to take the hard decision by introducing 3 products from Ferrero, Kinder Bueno, Kinder Chocolat and Nutella.

Other multinationals are also in negotiations to introduce some of their products very soon on the shelves of the German hard-discounter in France and some other major European markets, such us Belgium and the Netherlands.

During the last 5 years, many other hard-discounters in France (Lidl, Leader Price, Netto, Le Mutant, Ed/Dia) had to open their store doors with pleasure to the multinationals.

The biggest rumor is about Coca-Cola invading very soon the shelves of hard-discounters.

German hard-discounter Aldi is planning to open 40 new stores in Hungary by the end of year 2014, taking the total number of stores to 110. In each of the coming three years, the chain hopes to open between ten and fifteen stores, especially in Budapest and the county capitals.

Aldi entered Hungary since 2008 and has built 75 stores since then – of which 13 are located in Budapest alone.

Nestlé Waters will be going through very hard times during their 2012 negotiations with major supermarket and hypermarket chains in France after listing one of their products in Lidl stores.

Lidl is one of the world’s major hard discounter and in continuous price war against the private labels of supermarkets and hypermarkets, by offering not-known brands to their shoppers. But in recent years, all major hard discounters started offering international brands on their shelves such as Nutella, Coca-Cola, Head&Shoulders and Nescafe and many others.

Lidl is selling Perrier PET 1l at a very attractive price of 0,64€ (3,84€ for pack of 6), while other major retailers are selling the same at an average price of 3,95€ in Auchan, 3,91€ in Système U, 3,88€ in Leclerc, 3,86 € in Carrefour and Intermarché.

Nestlé Waters had to calm down France No.1 retailer Carrefour by having a explosive promotion of “Buy 1 Get 1”.

Leclerc did wait long to follow on a “me-too” promotion on its private label, offered at 2,82€ the pack of 6x1l.

From their internal design and appearance which is far from looking like the shelves and displays of regular supermarkets and hypermarkets, hard-discount stores were considered restricted to “the poor”. Mostly these are low-income households with children who visit such stores but with the global economic changes and the market developments, the clientele of hard-discount are getting more diversified.

Indeed, nowadays many middle-income households are also shopping at hard-discount stores because they are buying lots of basic goods, however, they still also shop in hypermarkets and supermarkets. This is actually what is called “zapping”, as consumers are unfaithful to products, brands and distribution channels. Thus, the hard discount stores have attracted an increasing population.

70% of households in France visit at least once a year a hard-discount (secodip), this represents 2 of 3 French households. Households are more and more attracted by “cheap stores” or the what-so-called “every day low prices”.

The hard-discount clientele can be divided into 4 categories:

The disappointed:
They attend more often hard-discount, as hypermarkets leave a very bad image in terms of price/quality. They also want to minimize the time spent doing their shopping, which is almost impossible in a hypermarket or supermarket. The average time spent in a hard-discount shop is 20 minutes, about 3 times less than in hypermarkets.

The hedonist:
This category takes pleasure while shopping and choosing products, which is why they occasionally visit hard-discounters because they are attracted by the promotions and the original products. But this does not prevent them from attending other store formats.

Small budgets:
They regularly attend hard-discount stores because they seek the lowest price and they appreciate the speed of service at check-outs.

New brand seekers:
They attend only occasionally hard-discounters because they are seduced by the unknown brands and their quality products. As a result, they do their main shopping in supermarkets and hypermarkets.

No matter in which of the above categories the consumer falls, the 3 essential points in a hard-discount store are: low prices, speed of service and proximity. Hard-discounters also understood a very important aspect of daily shopping need of their consumers, which is “quality” and this is getting more obvious during their negotiations.

It is almost impossible to create a standard profile for consumers and their shopping behavior, as each one of them creates his own shopping pattern based on the different distribution formats he has access to and depending on his needs.

In October 2010, Lidl opened it frist 2 stores in Cyprus, then came another 8 locations to increase the total number of stores to 10 by May 2011.

Furthermore, it aims to achieve a double digit share of the retail sector as plans also include attaining a turnover of 90 mln euros by the end of year 2011.

This aggressive marketing approach pushed Orphanides to declare a plan to open 11 Orphanides Express stores throughout the island offering “the lowest prices” in the market, challenging Lidl’s worldwide reputation of “quality buys at smart prices”.

Last week while in Nicosia, I visited a Lidl store and i was really impressed by the traffic they were having. 8 busy check-outs with almost full shopping carts. Mainly foreigners and expats are loyal consumers to Lidl in Cyprus as I understood from our local friends.

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Sweden/Sverige, officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden shares borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.

At 450,295 square kilometres, Sweden is the third largest country in the European Union by area, with a total population of about 9.4 million. Sweden has a low population density of 21 inhabitants per square kilometer with the population mostly concentrated in the southern half of the country. About 85% of the population live in urban areas.Sweden’s capital is Stockholm, and with 1.3 million inhabitants, it is also Sweden’s largest city.

The retail scene of the Swedish market is a bit different from other European countries, mainly western ones, where big groups are controlling the mini/super/hyper daily game, while in Sweden, it’s the Swedish retail brands themselves who have full domination of their own field and so far no external player showed up except in the hard-discount format.

Swedish retail market is dominated by 4 local players who, together they manage 97% of the total market size: ICA, COOP, AxFood and Bergendahls.

The hard-discount format also exist, where Lidl (Germany) and Netto (Denmark) are simply enjoying 2% of the total market size and the last 1% are all the rest.

Another store category is working in the shadow silently, the ethnic stores, well organized in Sweden, but with limited dispersion in the populated areas of Stockholm and its suburbs, these stores are mostly owned by immigrants and their surface varies from 100 to 700 sqm.