Poland Hard-Discount Scene

The Polish retail scene is not much different from the rest of East and West European markets, but when it comes to the Hard-Discount sector, a major player is out there and trying to control it 100% against the other smaller players who are way behind Biedronka in this race.

Today Biedronka (the ladybug in Polish) owned by Portuguese Jeronimo Martins has more than 1,600 stores located both in large cities and small towns around Poland and regularly visited by 58% of Poles.

Biedronka increased its sales by 29% in 2010. Such results placed the chain among the three largest Polish companies. According to Jeronimo Martins, Biedronka’s sales revenues for 2010 totaled around PLN 19.2bn (€4.81bn).

At present, the chain is comprised of 1,649 stores with an assortment of 900 products with 9 active distribution centers and 2 new DC coming in 2011.
In 2010, Biedronka opened 183 new stores and the plan for 2011 is 200 new stores and a total of 3,000 stores by the end of 2015.

The followers in this game are the Germans Lidl (380 stores) & Aldi (45 stores), the Danish Netto (200 stores) and soon to become discounter local chain PoloMarket (300 stores).

All 4 of them, are watching and monitoring Biedronka’s moves very closely but the latter is not even losing time looking around as they are busy being aggressive.

Plus the purchasing power that is now in the hands of Biedronka is not accessible by others, just imagine the pressure they put on suppliers and brand principles for a simple promotion operation in all their stores for a week or 10 days, let us say they will order an average of 3 cases of 1 product in 1650 stores, that is 4950 cases or around 60,000 units, so they can easily twist your elbow when it comes to price.