Carrefour wants to penetrate the BRIC market

After China and unable to settle in India where the group met with many difficulties, it seems that Russia offers more facilities. Indeed, Carrefour is reportedly negotiating the purchase of the supermarket chain Sedmoï Kontinient. The amount of the transaction involved a total of approximately 940 million euros. Russian distributor currently has 140 outlets in Russia.

It would therefore appear that the establishment of Carrefour in emerging markets with high potential remains a priority of his strategy.

Threats on Carrefour

Carrefour has been the victim of serious threats for weeks now. Cards with skeletons on them have been put among the goods in the supermarkets. But today these threats are getting more and more serious, a a woman brought a letter to the shop settled in Venissieux, France. This letter asked for 800 000 euros, or some people would bring poisonned food in the shop.
Carrefour is absolutely not making fun of the threat, as they increased the number of people to monitor what is going on in and around their supermarkets.

I tried to reach someone at the HQ, but no one wanted to answer any of my questions about this issue. Indeed, an enquire is on tracks, so they will let us know the result, but nothing before the official stuff!

Carrefour goes into corner stores

The first Carrefour City opened its doors in the 16th district of Paris. This store will have as characteristics to be relatively small (approximately 410 m²), to be located in town centre and to have opening hours adapted to the urban life (6/7 days of 7:00AM to 11:00PM). This "mini-market" will be composed of 3 distinct areas:
o snacking and ready-made meals
o traditional products
o relaxation area at the store entrance (microwaves, coffee machines, bar and chairs)

That shows that Carrefour tries to widen its horizons by deciding to target the urban population who does not want to move out to the downtown areas to make its purchases.
It is a premiere in France but Carrefour had already tried out this system in Brussels since a similar store had opened in September 2008 on the Chaussée de Charleroi.
Carrefour thinks about opening two other Carrefour City away from Paris:
o in Nimes on January 23rd
o in Avignon on February 4th

I have personally tested out it in Belgium and I can say that it is a very good system for the people who do not wish to make haute cuisine. But the store sells interesting number of products.

Carrefour to open 28 new retail location in 2009

Despite very bad results for year 2008, the french ‘s giant retail company carrefour announce the creation of 28 new market in China for 2009.

Carrefour has already launch a profit warning for year 2009, explaining that this exercice won’t be better than the 2008 because of the global economy slowdown. Carrefour is also afraid that Tesco, the third global retailer which is better implant in BRIC area take the lead on Carrefour.
During 2008, carrefour opened 22 hypermarket in China, we can assist to an increase of power of the french implantation on chinese soil.

Despite a strong economy slowdonw, carrefour which is badly affected by the crisis continue to invest on the most profitable market and in the same time restructur his activities in Europe where hypermarket attract less and less customers in profit of small local retail center.

Are chinese investment going to save carrefour’s world second place ? Carrefour is facing a lack of influence in India, country whithout which it can’t pretend to be such a world leader.

Tesco has strong chances to win this battle.

Russia : Next step of confrontations between the leaders of retail industry

Russia is one of the emergent countries in the distribution sector. Indeed, the turnover of the sector was already of 200 billion dollars in 2004 and could reach 500 billion dollars in 2010. This market attracts more and more the world leaders such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart.

Moreover, the local actors are still very present in this sector either via small shops of districts, or via supermarkets and other hypermarkets. The German distributor Metro is the only one among the 10 larger world distributors to be established in Russia. Currently, Wal-Mart and Carrefour are not yet present in Russia but it would seem that the two giants are decided to attack this market in a near future.
Indeed, Carrefour should open during 2009 its first hypermarket in Russia in a shopping mall of Krasnodar (southern of the country). An agreement with the governor of Krasnodar gives a report on an investment of Carrefour of 100 million dollars over 5 years to open several hypermarkets, supermarkets and other structures in the area of Krasnodar. Carrefour is looking also on russian distributors in order to purchase shares and to be more present on the market. One of them is Lenta. Wal-Mart is also in race in order to take the control of the russian distributor Lenta.

If Carrefour manages to leapfrog Wal-Mart on this point, the french multinational could finally restore its former glory after several failures such as India. To the contrary, if Wal-Mart wins this battle, the American giant will enter easily the Russian market.