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By Posted on Posted in Drive Stores, France, Retail No Comments

In France, store concepts known as “hypermarchés drive” or drive-through hypermarkets are springing up across the country.

Investment in these drive-through formats is growing primarily because “pure” grocery e-commerce sites that include home delivery have not really taken off in France. Customers are often unwilling to pay delivery costs and many do not want to block out time to wait for their goods.

Customers can either use the drive-through service spontaneously via electronic terminals at the station or order their items in advance online and pick them up at the service point. Once the order is complete and the shopper has arrived at the pick-up point, the products are delivered to the customer’s vehicle in less than five minutes. In France, there is no service charge and retailers maintain that prices are exactly the same as those found in their hypermarkets.

Drive stores in France are an interesting trend to watch, as there is no reason to believe the concept can’t take root elsewhere, as well.

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Below is a counter for Drive numbers per chain in France with the openings of new locations during 2013.

Compteur Drive Novembre France

If you live in France and would like to check a drive near your location or compare, you can visit these 2 sites (in French)

http://www.liste-drive.fr/

http://www.courses-en-drive.fr/

http://www.mes-courses-drive.fr/

By Posted on Posted in France, Retail, Retail Distribution, Supermarkets No Comments

When you enter the 4th quarter of the year, retailers and suppliers also enter the ultimate battle zone of negotiations of the following year.

And it looks like Casino stores (part of the French retailer Groupe Casino) are going down the road every supplier avoids to enter, the break where the two sides start pulling in their own directions and conditions and end up not getting anywhere, thus removing the product(s) from the shelves becomes inevitable.

Below is a sample, for English readers, the sign says: “You will not find the Puget products on our shelves because we did not accept their excessive price increase, instead discover the Casino oil – Casino gets engaged for you”.

Puget-Casino

By Posted on Posted in 2012, 2013, France, Retail No Comments

La grande distribution en 2012 subit les conséquences de l’impact de la baisse de la croissance et celle du moral des ménages. Malgré une augmentation de 2% en valeur en 2012, le secteur reste à la traine par rapport à ses performances de 2011. La progression de l’e-commerce, les bénéfices des discounters ou encore le ralentissent des ventes de biens d’équipements, Cedric Bra, analyste distribution au sein d’Euromonitor International, explique qui sont les gagnants et les perdants de l’année 2012.

By Posted on Posted in CEO, Entrepreneurship, France No Comments

Nicolas Riché is the CEO of Columbus Café, a French chain of coffee shops, who went on Patron Ingocnito (Undercover Boss) on the French TV channel M6 as an undercover employee in his own stores to check how employees react, their needs, the stores problems and at the end, he revealed his real identity to the 4 employees with whom he spent 1 full day separately, training and going thru their daily tasks, after asking them to come to the main office in Paris and offered them many different ways to improve themselves and the store services to serve the brand differently and more positively.

You can watch the full video at this link (in French).

By Posted on Posted in E-commerce, E-tailing, France, Jordan, Startups, Supermarkets No Comments

Yesterday in a news from AMEinfo, a Jordan based company called MENA Apps launched its online supermarket Sallaty.jo for the Jordanian market.

Online supermarkets in the Middle East or Gulf are not a viable business and most of whom tried to launch this concept ended up shutting down.

Many years back during the dotcom boom in the early 2000, Webvan was “the” online grocery who wanted to take the retail grocery business to the next level and they ended up burning $830 millions and firing 2,000 employees.

And while real brick-and-mortar stores are looking for ways to shrink their operational cost and surfaces, some think that the online option is the solution. Big international retailers have all the needed platforms and money to do it and are barely succeeding in it (compare online grocery sites in France), so the main direction in a very advanced retail market crowded with endless big names and store formats like France are moving towards Drive formats (in French), you buy online and come pick up your stuff yourself from a store near you (compare Drives in France).

If you are not a supermarket yourself, it will be quite hard to offer the needed assortment to your clients, as a supermarket have on average 45,000 items on its shelves so it is quite impossible for any start-ups to stock all these items and variations in its back store, especially with all the fresh and frozen food. And if you have a kind a joint venture with a supermarket, you will end up with very tiny margins on your orders, especially that no supermarket will sacrifice a big chunk of his margin that he is fighting day and night to get from his suppliers.

Good luck for Sallaty.jo.

By Posted on Posted in Competition, France, Retail, Retail Distribution, Supermarkets No Comments

In retail distribution, the relation between the retailers and the suppliers is always in high tension, the below sign was seen at a Leclerc store in France, saying that Danone is refusing to deliver them goods, because the later thinks the store is not selling their products at the right price. Which means that Leclerc is selling cheaper than the competition and this did put Danone under pressure from other retailers in France.

photo credit: Haroldparis.fr

By Posted on Posted in Brands, France, Private Label 2 Comments

Carrefour, the French retailer, has unveiled its new private label range of beauty products, which will be launched worldwide this year.

Under the name “Les Cosmétiques Design Paris” the brand includes: toiletries, facial care, anti-aging products, haircare and make-up.? With about 650 SKUs, 20 of them organic-certified, and prices ranging from 1 to 12 euros, the new private brand will replace Carrefour’s existing offerings.

The launch will begin in France with make-up in March, followed by skin and hair care products and toiletries in May.?

Les Cosmétiques Design Paris will hit Carrefour stores in Italy, Spain and Belgium by the end of the year, before reaching Asia and South America in 2013 and 2014.



Source

By Posted on Posted in E-commerce, France No Comments

CDiscount is a French e-commerce website (part of Groupe Casino), as per their definition they are the leaders in France, but if you ever decide to visit their website you need to be very cautious as surfing their website can have bad effect on your eyes.

The website makes you dizzy as there is not one single space or section giving you the freedom of relaxing your eyes and it seems the simplicity of white background does not exist.

From the main header that includes ads and the main navigation bar, going down to the discounts of the different categories, till you get down to the footer, more and more mental and visual torturing till you manage to locate anything interesting.

And that repeated background is the killer of them all!

By Posted on Posted in France, Lebanon, Retail, Supermarkets 1 Comment

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.