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By Posted on Posted in 2020, Consumer, Consumer Behavior, Convenience Stores, Retail, Retail Distribution, Russia No Comments

I just finished reading a book entitled “VkusVill: how to a retail revolution by doing everything wrong” by Evgeny Shchepin, an employee of the Russian chain VkusVill (translated as Tasty Town).

I recommend this book to anyone in the consumer retail space for its simple language and mostly the transparency in which the book was written by someone from inside the company and bluntly showing all the errors they made during their scaling and growth process.

We are used mostly to American, Japanese, European, and lately Chinese corporate success stories and books but not anything coming from Russia until I discovered this book, although Russia is one of the world largest consumer retail markets with giants like Magnit, X5 Retail Group and Lenta, to name few with many different store formats and thousands of locations all over the Russian territory.

The book talks about 37 rules that made the success of VkusVill, it really shows “the simple culture” of a company that became a Russian success story and the persistence of the founder and his team to make it work given the good and bad circumstances while keeping a start-up spirit running in the air and without taking 1 single loan and rotating the money generated from actual stores to open new locations!!!

You can download the book from this link: https://vkusvill.ru/en/business/files/VkusVill_Book.pdf

Extracted from their website:

VkusVill started by Andrey Krivenko in Moscow in 2009 as a food retail chain (convenience format; 150 sqm trade area; 2,000 SKUs) offering fresh and healthy food with short shelf life at affordable prices, all under its own brand ‘VkusVill’.

In 2019, the Company reached 1,200 stores in Moscow and other cities of Russia (27 in total), reported $1.3 bn of revenue, and had over 10,000 employees. Explosive growth was always financed with operating cash flow only. VkusVill has always been profitable and cash-positive. No external equity investments and no loans ever since inception.

VkusVill leverages its strong brand equity (healthy products at affordable prices) and its unique IT algorithms which allow for efficient supply chain of products with short shelf life (up to 7 days). It also has super-high customer engagement, achieved via various feedback-collecting channels (mobile apps, social networks, website). ROI when opening a store is over 100%. It all helps the Company to report historical sales CAGR of well over 50% and open stores quickly.

Additional Reading:

VkusVill is planning to launch in the Netherlands & France, read more here

Check the VkusVill store concept by Art. Lebedev Studio at this link

By Posted on Posted in 2020, Consumer, Consumer Behavior, Economy, Retail, Retail Distribution, Shoppers, Shopping, Supermarkets No Comments

Retailers + Brands and Consumers + Shoppers = it’s love, maybe a 1-sided love affair, but it is there since forever.

Retailers and Brands cannot live in a world where consumers and shoppers do not exist, thus they need to take good care of them and fall in love with them every day and grow this love just to keep them coming their way because they are their only raison-d’être to open their stores every morning.

The retailers BIG Data should consider in the overall perspective:
_ Forecast & Replenishment Demand
_ Historical Purchases
_ Seasonality of Products and Events
_ Local & National Events
_ National and International Holidays
_ Strikes (if any)
_ Promotions & Their Effect
_ Weather Effect

Then in the more personalized part of the love affair with its clientèle:
_ The Store Location
_ The Neighborhood
_ Its Customers & Shoppers Profiles
_ The Surrounding Competition
_ Some Other Specifics

Reading Recommendation
SMALL DATA by Martin Lindstrom

Hired by the world’s leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick, Martin Lindstrom spends three hundred nights a year overseas, closely observing people in their homes. His goal: to uncover their hidden desires and turn them into breakthrough products for the world’s leading brands. In a world besotted by the power of Big Data, he works like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, accumulating small clues to help solve a stunningly diverse array of challenges. Lindstrom connects the dots in this globe-trotting narrative that will fascinate not only marketers and brand managers, but anyone interested in the infinite variations of human behavior.

Small Data combines armchair travel with forensic psychology into an interlocking series of international clue-gathering detective stories. It presents a rare behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to create global brands, and along the way, reveals surprising and counterintuitive truths about what connects us all as humans.

By Posted on Posted in 2017, Consumer, Retail, Retail Distribution, Shoppers No Comments

Lately, the death of retail as we know it is everywhere on the internet. Big brands disappearing overnight, stores shutting down by dozens daily, malls becoming ghost towns and everybody is pointing at the internet being the reason behind this.

Well, I am a big believer of brick-and-mortar retail and no matter how big the internet and Amazon.com will get, in my opinion retail is here to stay but conditionally.

If retailers want to live, they need and should innovate. The beauty of brick-and-mortar retail is the flexibility.

The flexibility of changing what is not working, finding new ways to make their stores better and more attractive, spending more time on their shoppers behavior, re-engineering their concepts, analyzing their data, adapting new communications channels, taking a step back and looking at the wider picture of the situation and correct things.

It is not true that the internet is killing the retail when the internet retailers are opening physical shops. This simply means the actual business model of the retailers is not working anymore and they need change.

Change is not easy, especially for the old school retailers. with large, very large stores, hundreds of employees on the floor, endless aisles and a heavy machine to operate. The new retail business model should be lean to survive, with a very lean structure just to quickly adapt to changes, move on and live a happy retail life.

By Posted on Posted in Accelerator, Consumer, Incubator, Private Label, Retail, Retail Distribution, Startups No Comments


I am a big fan of consumer products and retail concepts and this is what I do for living. I was trying lately to find any incubator and/or accelerator related to those industries in this part of the world (Levant & MENA) but unfortunately I came across so many of them who are only focused on technology startups and only technology and some of them also have a restricted geographic region they do cover.

I was kind of disappointed seeing no one is interested in “offline” consumer and retail (except if you are an online or e-commerce oriented). A very big industry and sector that touch the lives of millions if not billions worldwide but investors most probably prefer the fast bucks lane and are in continuous search for the next Facebook or Uber.

I would like to launch a consumer & retail oriented incubator and accelerator with no geographic restrictions, but looking for people sharing the same vision and dream to build it together.

If you are a consumer and retail incubator and accelerator that I missed finding in a way or another, please get in touch.

if you are a consumer and retail passionate, let’s do this together.

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 Retail, Retail Distribution, Shopping, Supermarkets No Comments

I do visit lots of shopping malls during my trips, or my business trip, basically I am not there for shopping for the latest fashion trends, but instead to visit the supermarket or hypermarket inside those malls for professional reasons.

I was lately in Jeddah-Saudi Arabia, staying at a hotel with a walking distance from a big shopping mall just across the street, so it took me few steps to enter it and after going around it, I decided to ask the information desk where the supermarket was located and to my surprise the answer was: “Sorry sir, there is no supermarket in this mall”.

Haifaa Mall is a trendy shopping mall, mainly focusing on major fashion brands.

haifaa

By Posted on Posted in 2012, 2013, Retail, Retail Distribution, Romania No Comments

Grocery retail market from Romania has fared quite dynamic in 2012, formats which include stores that were open throughout the year, was especially supermarkets and discount stores.

Format winner in 2012 was supermarket, small stores (convenience stores) has exploded. Thus, Mega Image retailer, present in Romanian retail market with two formats: Mega Image and Shop & Go, opened in 2012 the largest number of stores: 88, ending the year with a total of 193 stores.

Mega Image, the Romanian banner of Belgian company Group Delhaize, is retailer with the largest number of stores in Romania.

Another performers are Profi, who opened in 2012 no less than 45 stores, reaching 149 units at the end of the 2012 and Carrefour Market and Carrefour Express, the two supermarket banners of french retailer Carrefour, who opened in 2012 37 units in total.

On discounter sector Lidl, the German discounter opened 26 stores in 2012 and the other discount retailer, Penny Market has opened 14 units.

No major changes occurred on hypermarket sector, as expected, the total opening was only 12 hypermarket stores: 10 Kaufland stores and one in his right Auchan, Carrefour and Cora. Next year will counting the 20 real stores to Auchan, purchased late last year by the french retailer.

Cash & Carry format has stabilized somehow in 2012, at least in terms of number of stores. No store opening for the two representatives of this format: Metro and Selgros.

retail in Romania 2012

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