US Retail Email Trend 2011
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Category: Retail
Monoprix Back To Lebanon
Monoprix, the French retailer (www.monoprix.fr) is back to Lebanon after leaving the market for 3 years, following the deal of selling their previous point-of-sales (5 super and 1 hyper) to the Kuwaiti group, The Sultan Center.
The 1st come-back store is located in Jnah, between The Sultan Center and Spinneys, few meters from the old biggest Monoprix outlet and is much smaller in surface size from the previous one.
Once you enter the store, you definitely feel the “French retail touch”, which totally disappeared when TSC took over the previous stores. After strolling the aisles, you will certainly notice the strong presence of the Monoprix private label, almost in all categories with quite good visibility.
I am not sure about this private label presence policy, if it is a strategic move for the future or tactical, to put suppliers under pressure during the opening of the few coming stores in 2012?
Valet parking service is available at the location.
Next year will definitely bring lots of surprises on the Lebanese retail scene, specially if Carrefour will be ready with its 1st store scheduled for 2013, located at Beirut City Center, the $40 million USD super structure shopping mall on the outskirts of Beirut owned and operated by Majid Al Futtaim Holding.
Lebanese Supermarket TVC
Lebanese supermarkets are rarely on television, unless it is Easter or Christmas season or they are running a heavy corporate promotion to push clients to their stores.
Fahed Supermarket in Furn-El-Chebak, Lebanon (not linked to Fahed Supermarket in Jounieh, even they are cousins), decided to go on TV.
Their TV commercials are the worst that I have ever seen for any retailer, at least in Lebanon.
Who would use such animation in 2011 and what the hell is “Red & Pink Panther” doing there?
Shop & Win Gold
If you are in Lebanon and you shop for 20,000LL at Coop or Giant Stores, you might be a lucky winner of one of the 200 gold coins.
Unfortunately after searching long on the internet, I could not find any website for Coop Lebanon, except the website of Giant Stores with no much information about their Lebanese operation.
Giant Stores Lebanon and Coop Lebanon are under the management of Al Muhaidib Group.
in Saudia Arabia, Giant Stores POS were merged with Azizia Panda and in Qatar, they were bought by Al Meera.
Fresh Market & Diavlo
Fresh Market is a Polish chain of convenience-type stores with 100 POS today and a foreseen potential of 500 stores in the future, part of Zabka Polska.
Diavlo is one of my favorite fonts, it is a free font that contains 5 weights: Light, Book, Medium, Bold and Black.
Fresh Market used Diavlo in a very creative way in their logo and brand identity with a small change in the initial F and adding a flower that is a freshness symbol.
Toys “R” Us in Poland
US-based toy retailer Toys “R” Us wants to spend €44.5m on opening 20 stores within the next five years in Poland.
Toys “R” Us invested €2.2m in its first store in Poland, which opened 3 weeks ao in Warsaw’s Blue City shopping centre. The store surface is 2,400 m² and offers about 8,000 products, including major brands as well as private label brands not available in other toy stores.
The store is stocked through the company’s existing distribution channels in Europe.
Lebanon Supermarkets Websites
Below are screenshots of the websites of major Lebanese supermarkets. Unfortunately there are lots of work to be done on their online presence compared to European and American retail distribution chains.
Monoprix will be back in town soon & Carrefour will open its 1st store in 2012, hopefully their websites will be more attractive.
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ALDI, New Store Concept
ALDI, the German hard-discounter started revealing their new stores concept in Europe. The main idea of this new concept are: new colours, more light, modern materials. First 2 stores we renovated in Denmark and below are photos from a store in Belgium.
IPT & Metro Express
IPT, a Lebanese chain of fuel stations is being in non-stop action for the last few years on almost all of their locations. IPT fully owns, manage and supervise a network of over 30 gas stations, they also signed exclusive petroleum supply agreements with more than 130 gas stations across Lebanon.
IPT is taking gas station experience to another level, after introducing Mountain Mudd Espresso, the leading drive-thru specialty coffee franchises in the United States, they partnered with another fast food sector giant, McDonald’s, with dine-in and drive-thru options at many locations.
Yet another step made by IPT was into the retail world when they partnered with Metro Superstore, a Lebanese supermarket with 2 outlets (Maameltein and Chiah) and started opening Metro Express convenience store at many IPT locations (Amchit, Halat, Dekwaneh, Zouk).
Zouk Mikael store opened almost a month ago, it is a clean and neat store offering a quite large selection of basic products and a fresh section with sandwiches, salads and fresh juices. I would like to revisit after some time to check if the level of quality is maintained.
Muszkieterowie Polska
Yesterday I visited the headquarter of Muszkieterowie the Polish arm of the french retailer Les Mousquetaires.
Under the Intermarché brand, Muszkieterowie operates 168 stores in full franchising mode all over Poland with an exciting expansion plan for 2012. They also operate 78 BricoMarché stores.
