What Is Going On In India?

India has been for the past decade one of the most promising country in the world. It is considered part of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), a group of country which share common assets that set them among the potential leaders of the future.

I have always considered India as one of the most promising of these countries for several reasons:

• They have a large population
• They have the chance to have access to the sea, which helps both importation and exportation
• They speak English, the language of world business
• They have high skills in computing, which is an opportunity.

But laetely, India has struggled to grow as much as expected.

A recent AT Kearney's report show that India fell to 14th on the most attractive destination for global retailers list. Those past years, a lot of retailers expressed a lot of interest in India, such as Carrefour which launched a cash & carry store couple of years ago, Walmart also, or Auchan that set a strong partnership with a big Indian company.

But things are moving slowly. The infrastructure remain low, and the average income too. What is the main issue remains political uncertainty and corruption. 

How long will retailers need to wait before leveraging the full potential of this continent-country?

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Category Management Series: The First Moment Of Truth

During these category management series, I am not really going to follow a specific order, nor establish a concrete way to manage categories. The goal is more to share some interesting thoughts and ways to have performning categories.

The first post of these series, I wanted to dedicate it to a concept I love, and that I have already discussed in this blog: The First Moment of Truth. Like a lot of other category management concept, the First Moment of Truth idea popped out of Procter & Gamble's people. Procter & Gamble was one of the first supplier to work together with Walmart to establish category management plan. 

The First Moment of Truth describes the fact that for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) shoppers make their decision within the 7 seconds prior to pick their products on shelves. As a result, Procter & Gamble decided to shift its marketing expenses from mass media to point of sales advertizing.

At this time, First moment of truth was composed by paper-based brochures, signs etc... But nowadays, while social media and new mobile technologies are springing up and their cost is lowering, you may see more and more mobile apps, TV screens, and so on. 

The main idea to get is that the art of mastering one shopper decision making process in store is one of the key component of category management efficiency. New tools are available to marketers to help this decision making process in store.

Red Market: An Internesting Store Concept

Here are couple of video clips I found on French website Linéaires. Belgian chain Red has made these videos to create the buzz online for its stores. You can see people enjoying a 1 full minute of free goods!

Beyond the interesting offer, it shows you the store concept with the product range Red proposes.

I believe Red is a 2.0 hard discounter, proposing people to self scan their products. It allows the company to save a lot of money, as cash desk expenses are among the top expenses of such stores.

Axa Innovates In The Banking Industry: Introducing Soon

Axa launched on June, 1st Soon, a new mobile tool to manage personal banking accounts. My friend Henri Kaufman had the opportunity to try it as he was invited to the launching event of Soon. 

What is interesting with Soon, and what differentiate it from other applications launched by competitors, is that Soon has been based on the theory of Mickael Mangot, expert in the financial industry, that money does not make people happy.

The key strengths of the service:
- The tool allows you to program expenses in the near future to help you manage your account.
- The tool saves time: It is easy and fast to use, while usually keeping track of your bank accounts may take you a lot of time with traditional tools (tell me about it, with my complex Excel sheet I use!)
- The tool allows you to see the previous expenses, and therefore to analyse how your global expenses work, and where you may save money. This also creates opportunities for Axa to allow customers to save money that people will be able to place in their different products.

The challenge is high, but once you see this video, you clearly understand that Axa worked well around this problematic. 

soon from Soon on Vimeo.


I don't have any information yet on how many users have already downloaded Soon, or how many uses it, but clearly the service is efficient, and I believe that Axa took the lead on this topic.

I think these kinds of tools create a real added value for customers. The success of Mint in the US (which I can't help seeing it in France...) is a good example. Here is a video on how Mint works.

Thoughts of The Day 06/27/2013 : the correlation between sales performance and social media

I have interested myself in social media since the beginning, almost ten years ago (already). A lot of content has been developped about this topic, and how to use social media for business. Social media has grown fast, its use for marketing and sales purpose too.

But social media has entered in 2012 in a new era. To me, the transition has been marked by the IPO of Facebook. Indeed, social media companies like Facebook but also Twitter started a new phase when investors starts to ask for EBIT and profits.

This era started also by a slower growth of the number of users. There are still a lot of expectation from the marketing experts as I am, but the perspective changes. We start to see more and more studies questionning the supposely better efficiency than social media was suppose to offer.

From my prospective, I consider that it remains difficult to track the full benefits you may get from social media exposure.

But what is sure, is that companies that invest in social media tends to have the best results, or at least, tends to perform better than their competitors, especially regarding sales growth or market share gains.

Why? It is about the same than customer centric strategies:
1- These companies tend to create and innovate more, and we all know how innovation is important in these challenging times.
2- They tend to bond more with their clientele, so they tend in general to create more service and therefore more added value to customers.

Therefore there are a true, demonstrable correlation between business performance and social media presence. Now the goal is to have a clearer view of this link to understand it better, and to leverage it at its full potential.
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Category Management series

I have been a category manager for over two years now, and I rarely talk about this topic in my blog. Why? Because this blog is mostly focused on customer relationship management, marketing, and retail strategy. Also because I don't really want this blog to be linked directly to my professional activities. I have always considered my blog to be a way to go beyond my job, and to try to see what goes on in the business world.

Nevertheless, I have tried several time to find category management content on the web and especially in social media. I have looked for blogs, for websites, but there is very few content available. I find that it's a pitty, because I believe that category management is on the edge of a revolution. 

Category management has started in the 80s with the partnership between companies like P&G or Coca Cola and Walmart. For about 10-15 years, a lot of content has been developped in order to build the tools and the skills of category managers. But since the past 10 years, commerce evolved a lot, through new technologies and new way to perceive sales performance. Indeed, I believe that new techniques and new tools will come out soon.

Therefore, I decided to dedicate a little bit of time to discuss about what is category management, how it works.

If you have ideas or topics you would like me to discuss during this series, feel free to contact me (on Twitter it is the easiest @schriver).

The Risky Virgin's Brand Strategy in France

Virgin is the brand created by successful serial entrepreneur Richard Branson. He has been able to create a multi billion $ holding, with companies working in various markets.

In France Virgin is mostly known for its "megastores", big cultural stores selling books, musics, and high tech gears. Unfortunately the company has recently shut down. Virgin megastore has been bought back in 2001 by Lagardère, but due to the crisis in the music industry, and the big shift towards Internet for cultural goods, the company has not been able to survive.

Richard Branson has sold several of its business those past few years. The equity of these companies most of the time were highly estimated due to the Virgin brand, which he spent his life building. Now a lot of these business, for different reasons have not been able to flourish as expected. There are several thoughts that comes to my mind while analysis what happened especially to Virgin megastore in France:

• Who do you maintain a global brand like Virgin while it is owned by different companies, on different market, with different interest? Building a brand is a full time job, and it requires coordination, which is impossible when the different entities composing it are independant. Maybe what has been done is a real threat to the Virgin business currently hold by Branson.
• What is the real added value of buying the Virgin brand? If your corporation is not able to bond with the brand's message, it is impossible that it works. Therefore, owning Virgin as a brand but without mastering the component of it is useless.

What would be interesting is to see what are the next plans of Richard Branson: Does he want to expand to new markets? Or will he rather focus on its top companies in order to secure the future of Virgin as a brand?

Thoughts of the day 06/20: the Future of Direct marketing mailing

I really started to interest myself in direct marketing back in 2006, when I started to work for Ubifrance as a direct marketing assistant. At this time direct marketing was very popular and seemed to have a bright future. I remember also at this time I had some direct marketing classes at Ipag.

It was at the beginning of the 2000s that marketing data base really started to sprung up. Direct sales company used to owned comprehensive data base, but not a lot of other industries could really leverage such data warehouses.

I have always been impressed about the creative potential of this medium. The ability to play on the format, on the paper quality, the texture of the paper, etc... Was fascinating. But since then, whereas mailing was the first direct marketing medium, other direct marketing passed it, such as emailing (obviously) or social media.

Cheaper media like emailing have replaced mailing in most uses. The price/contact is indeed favorable to emailing, especially as the number of email contacts available is far more important.

Nevertheless, I believe that the quality aspect of mailing is still interesting to use. Obviously, due to return on investment considerations, mailing is mostly used to promote products with high added value or with a high facial price (airlines, car manufacturers...).

Because the number of mailing has lower, using mailing may allow your company to stand out, and have a high visibility.
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Toolbox Solutions: Great Category Management Tools

I was looking for blogs who were discussing about category management when I encountered the nice website of Toolbox Solutions.

Toolbox Solutions is a Canadian company, expert in category management tools which are proposed to both suppliers and retailers. They propose applications and software that allows category managers to pilot their category performances, on any kind of digital devices: tablets, computers, smartphones...

I believe this is very interesting, as most of the time it is difficult to get easy to access and user friendly graphs and stats to support category management decisions.

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Expert in CRM MDC Partenaire Launches Its New Website

I'm going to do a little bit of commercials for a company that I appreciate, especially its founder Christophe Bouguereau, one of the best expert of customer relationship management I know, who taught me a lot.

I am also eager to promote this new website as I participated in the launch of the former one, so I always like to keep track of the previous job experience I had. 

MDC Partenaire is a consulting firm expert in customer relationship management. Its field of expertise encompass all of the aspect of CRM:

• Data base management
• Direct marketing campaign (mailing, emailing, etc...)
• Customer relationship management strategy (analysis, set up of CRM solutions...)
• Call Center management...

MDC Partenaire has also invented a 360° customer relationship management model, called OSICAM. As CRM is a complex trade, OSICAM allows to analyze each component of the CRM chain, and also to check how each component is connected to the others.

What I like about the new site:

• The graphs are clean, it is not polluted by too many charts or pics.
• The content is clear, and you can see who are the people working at MDC Partenaire, and what are the key information about the company.

If you are interested about further information about MDC Partenaire, feel free to contact me, I will help you to get in contact with them.

Thoughts of The Day: 13/06/2013

I decided to start these thoughts of the day posts for 3 main reasons.

The first one is that it takes a long time to write great blog posts. It requires to monitor and check information sources where you will get the ideas and content. It requires you to write long posts, detailed. It also requires you to add several things, such as pictures, videos, external links, or labels, in order to improve the simple text content.


The second reasons, is that a lot of the blog ideas I have and I had in the pasts come from thoughts running through my mind, without even noticing them. This is what Henri Kaufman would call serendipity: the fact of founding great things by not searching for them. Also, and Henri would also acknowledge, by willing to have the best blog possible, you procrastinize a lot. And most of the time by doing that, once you finish writing the post, it isn't as appealing as you pictured it.

The third reason is that I saw a lot of success of people having cool concept that required them little time. Henri Kaufman used to do “drawings without pencils“ basically picturing a scene of the day! Same thing for my friend Shawn Champagne that takes a video every day and then compile It, one second per day, every year.

Therefore I decided the best way to keep on a good pace of posting was to write almost everyday, just letting thoughts crossing my mind and sharing it with you.

Hope you like it.

Monoprix To Sell Via Amazon's Marketplace

Monoprix is one of the most active French retailer in the web. Its leading position as proximity stores in France has pushed him to look for a connected clientele, that uses a lot new technologies and social media. Therefore, even though Monoprix only counts for about 3% of grocery market shares, they have the most likes on their Facebook pages (586 Ks, which is roughly 1% of French population, and should be about 30% of the penetration rate of the company).

Monoprix has decided to use Amazon's marketplace in France to sale its private lable clothing lines. This is a very interesting news, for several reasons:

• As a private label, I don't know any other examples of concrete retailers' private labels that are sold outside of their stores... It would be interesting to see how customers will react to it.
• Monoprix is part of French retail tycoon Groupe Casino, one of the largest retailer in Fance and in the world, which owns Cdiscount, the 2nd largest e-merchant in France. Why didn't they pick cdiscount to distribute their products instead of Amazon, which is a competitor? I would like to know why they made such a move.
• Monoprix already sold its clothes on its website, Monoprix.fr. By going on Amazon, what is the idea behind that? What is the strategy? To me there are several opportunities. Going online may help Monoprix securing large amount of goods sold, in order to leverage potential purchasing power over suppliers. It may also help them with a more efficient supply chain online than what they currently have. Also, maybe Amazon has more traffic, and therefore, that is the added value Amazon proposes to Monoprix...

I believe that so far Monoprix is testing Amazon's marketplace, to see how they may use this new distribution channel to leverage new sales, and gain visibility online. It would be interesting to see how this activity evolve, as other retailers may be interested, such as Carrefour, or Auchan.

Thoughts of the Day 06/12/2013: New way of blogging

I'm going to launch a new series to my blog: the thoughts of the day. When I started my blog about 10 years ago (time flies...) the blog was called Schriver's Thoughts. The purpose was to share my opinion about business topics, mainly Internet, marketing and retailing.

My blogged of course evolved over the time and I specialized myself as an expert in CRM and digital marketing. I have always been eager to write well documented blog posts, with added value, most of the time based on some articles I found worth sharing with my audience.

But those past few years, I have not been that prolific on this blog. My job as a category manager has taken a lot of energy and focus. Now that I am more senior in my position, I would like to spend some more time on this blog. This is the reason why I have decided to write more often and to share more with my audience.

I decided that I would like to write these kinds of informal posts at least twice a week, and I'll explain you more about my philosophy later on.

Study Questions Social Media As A Traffic Source For E-Retailers

Social media's budgets and expenses have raised fast those past few years. As social media gained exposure , companies tried to leverage these new media in order to raise sales, especially by reaching customers in a brand new way. Hence, a lot of market studies and professional articles discussed about how an appropriate social media strategy helped companies to trigger sales, and raise revenues.

Nevertheless, it seems that the real potential of social media as a revenue generator is still questioned. A recent study showed that social media is already lagging as a direct traffic source for e-merchants. 

"Social media represented just 1.55 percent of all ecommerce traffic, way behind search (31.43 percent) and trailing email (2.82 percent). And social media traffic numbers were down from Q1, 2012, when they were 2.36 percent. The data lead to the question: Should brands change their approach to social marketing?"

I have always been an early user of social media, but also an evangelist. Despite these facts, I have also studied a lot how to use social media like Facebook, Twitter among others in order to generate more business, and in general to improve customer relationship management. And as I have become an expert of the question, I still wonder sometimes how to use these tools in order to have concrete business results.

By the nature of social media, even though they are set with a large amount of customer data available (what people calls "big data"), it is difficult to link one sales to one action on social media. 

What is for sure is that companies that have invested important budgets in social media most of the time are the ones who thrives the most on their market. This study is for sure very interesting because it sets two facts we should never forget:

• Social media remains small compared to other mass media like TV, radios, or even newspapers
• Social media return on investment is not that easy to measure. 

I believe that social media is here to stay, and that there is a lot of room for improvement in order to have better results with their usages. 

How To Leverage The Potential Of Web to Store?

I'd like to thank PPC, a famous French blogger and friend, that tweeted a grat article (in French) on how to leverage the potential of Web to Store.

Indeed, a lot of retail professional complains on the new hype of "show rooming", the fact that customers tend to visit stores to see and touch products, get information by the sales person, and then compare prices at home to finish up buying at home, most of the time on a competitor's website.

The show rooming trend is hitting hard some retailers working on the cultural goods, like Virgin in France, Barnes & Noble in the US, and also the high tech retailers, like Best Buy, or Darty in France.

Nevertheless, there are also ways to leverage the Internet in order to create foot traffic in stores. This is what the article calls "the Web to Store".

There are 4 ways to use the web to store approach:

1. Couponning: Propose to customers to print online coupons to use in stores.
2. Store locator: Allow customers to prepare their visits on line by giving them extensive information on how to get to your point of sales.
3. Click & Collect: The shopper shops on line, but get its product at the point of sales. The advantage for both the customers and the retailer is that you save expenses on the delivery trip. The retailer may also trigger additional sales thanks to the visit.
4. The shopping preparation: Sometimes the web is better to get information, and to finish up the work in store. I believe that works a lot for purchases with a long decision making process, that will need the advocacy of a sales representative.

Despite the fact I believe web to store may help one store to raise its sales and in overal, grow the whole business (both online and in store), I believe that in overal, the rise of Internet will destruct in the end the performances of traditional stores. But in the end, companies that will be able to set a strong position online with a great quality network of stores have a great advantage upon competition. 

What do you think about it?

Le category management à l'ère du multicanal et du digital

Un petit article en français pour souligner l'exellent travail entre autres part le master distribution et relation client de l'Université Paris Dauphine.

Le travail porte sur les évolutions du métier de category manager causées par l'avénement du Drive. En effet, le drive ne cesse de gagner des parts de marché sur les magasins traditionnels, et bien évidemment, les techniques se doivent de s'adapter à ce canal de vente.

Cela me rappelle un peu la problématique soulevée par Henri Isaac au sujet de l'évolution des techniques de merchandising en ligne. Le category management des points de ventes virtuels en ligne n'en est qu'à son début, et je suis sûr que les présentations de produits et les techniques de vente vont s'améliorer et se développer très rapidement.

Le travail se focalise principalement sur la structure de management de l'offre: Est ce que les équipes dédiées à la gestion de catégorie des drives doivent elles être différentes des équipes gérant les points de vente classique?

Vous pouvez trouver en cliquant ici l'étude menée, et les réflexions liées.

Il est sûr qu'il est intéressant d'avoir des category managers qui gèrent les 2 parties de l'offre, car le client ainsi que le produit reste le même. Néanmoins, je pense qu'il y a énormément de compétences à développer via le drive et les courses en ligne, afin de capitaliser sur la croissance déjà existante.

French Retailer Intermarché Tests Connected Glass For In Store Usage

There is a lot of hype around Google glass now that Google allowed few people to test them, like Loic Lemeur. I have seen this cool video of Sergey Brin explaining how Google Glass works.

Technologywise, for sure, Google Glass has great potential. The technology is very advanced, but there will be a long time (at least 3 years I believe, as the cost when they'll be on the market is going to be outrageous) before it may actually be available to the mass market. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how people and companies will be able to leverage the potential of this device in order to improve people's lives.

Companies that will test and try these technologies now will get a very important advantage upon competition.

French retailer Intermarché is conducting right now some tests of connected glasses technology to see how it could be used by shoppers in store. They set up a partnership with French agency Digitas.

Here is a video showing their works.


They have identified 5 main usages:

• Indoor GPS: It may be very interesting, even though I think that their example is a little bit too limited to show how it may improve shopper experience. I believe that this application should be connected to the grocery shopping list to save time and being more efficient.
• Product scanning: Pretty cool, it already exists at Auchan with self scanning, even though you need a remote control to do so. But the cool thing is all the added infos you may get through it.
• Customized promotions: I don't know about this one, because I am affraid this may be too disruptive for customers.
• Cross and up sell: Let's be careful with this one too.
• Easy-Check out: This is just awesome! I believe a lot in it, even though there must be a lot of control to avoid stealing.

I believe they have already thought through a lot how to use  these glasses. Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind while watching this video:

• These applications will actually be able to be proposed to customers once the customers will own some connected glasses. Same things with smartphones, it would be too costly for a store to borrow some of theses glasses to shop, as they must keep razor thin margins.
• It is important to create real added value, and the technology must not be too disruptive. For instance, proposing recipes when you buy a product is a cool idea, but pretty scary in terms of usage. Once marketers will use these kinds of techniques, it will scare shoppers off to use these glasses.
• I love the payment system. Retailers may save lot of money thanks to it (as cashiers are one of their biggest expenses) and customers will save times.

Demand and Sales Data: How To Leverage Both

As a category manager, I am used to deal with a lot of data: Sales statistics, market research, among others. The purpose of a category manager is to understand how to build the offer of one store in order to respond to consumers' demand and hence increase sales.

I read the article of the Harvard Business review: Demand and Sales Aren't Equivalent with a lot of interest. Indeed, the goal of this article is to show that sales figures don't really necessarily translates what consumers really need. And I must admit that as a category manager, with the hands full of sales data, we tend to focus on sales data.

But as the article details, there are a lot of reasons why both are different:

• Sales data don't show you the detail of how one household consume a product. One shopper may buy 3 different kinds of milk, but you may not know what will be the usage of it. Is there any milk that has been bought because you were out of stock of another milk? Is it because of a specific recipe? Is it a recurrent need?
• Sales data won't show you if your products match one consumer needs: If you sell for example shampoo bottles of 600 ml and only 600 ml, you will never know if this is too much, not enough. Consumers will buy it because they won't have the choice. 
• Sales data are mostly analysis of the past. It is tough to forecast future consumers behavior based on sales data (even though you may expect high increases of sales in different segments, but once you notice them, it is already too late). Markets evolve faster and faster, and it is important to have ways to watch what will be next.

Therefore, it is important to have data tools that will allow you to analyse the demand, and sales.

Some Thoughts About Yahoo! Buyout Of Tumblr

I am not used to comment fresh news on this blog anymore, as my schedule don't really allow me to write on a daily basis. Nevertheless, there has been a lot of buzz around the buyout of Tumblr by Yahoo! those past few days. 

I have never really used Tumblr, even though I reckon it is a great service, as I already owned my blogspot blog, which I find to be fine for my usage. I followed a bunch of blogs on the service. Probably Tumblr was a fresher and more adapted blogging service than the historical ones, and this is the reason why it works so well.

But Yahoo's and Tumblr's moves have been largely commented. I read this great article that resumes well the situation. Is there any winners in this situation?

• Yahoo has probably made the moves in order to strengthen its audience, especially leveraging the social media hype. Yahoo has for sure a strategy based on content. They have abandonned their own search engine, and is the 4th world most visited web page. But how will Yahoo find synergies between its actual services and Tumblr? It seems difficult to tell.
• Tumblr has never been oriented yet toward making a profitable business model. They have not earned any money yet. How will they be able to change quickly their service in order to turn Yahoo's investment into a profitable action?
• In overall, most of buyouts like this one, never really benefits the service for its customers. Orange for example is trying to sell Dailymotion, skype has been sold by Ebay not a long time after it acquired it, without making any improvements to the service. Sometimes the service even stop existing. So users most of the time are sacrified.

I also read another interesting article (I don't find the link back though), which was interesting: Yahoo, despite all, remains a profitable business, that has been able to adapt the different cycles of the web history. Yahoo has always been able to adapt itself to adapt its business model. Maybe Tumblr's acquisition is one of many moves that will secure Yahoo's future.

Nevertheless, what has just happened is symptomatic of what happens in a lot of cases with start ups in the Internet world: A lot of companies develop cool products that interest a massive amount of people fast, but with no business model, hoping a bigger company will buy it out before they need to prove any consistent ways to generate revenues. And I believe that this fact will end soon, as Internet companies start to get bigger and bigger.

Henri Isaac: Building A New Path For E-Merchandising

Henri Isaac is a great source of inspiration for me. He was my teacher as a student @ Paris Dauphine, and I have always loved his passion for what his does, and his ability to envision what technology may bring to customer experience.

I had the opportunity to discuss with him not a long time ago, and he told me how furstrated he was to see how e-retailers were conceiving their merchandising approach. Indeed, whereas the Internet world has changed a lot those past 10 years, with the arrival of social media, smartphones, tablets, and new technologies, product pages have not evolved that much. 

Henri recently published an article about this topic. He explains that the products catalog concept, which is used by most of e-merchants is not adapted to the best online shopper experience. Even though products catalog have improved, it is important to have a better way to link the different products of the offer together, in order to improve the shopping experience.

He also believes that brand content will be key in order to raise the shopping experience.

I must say I totally agree with him, especially when it comes to tablet. I ve tried several times to shop on different websites, and most of the time it is almost impossible to shop with a tablet.

In my opinion, it would be interesting to see what kind of merchandising concepts will appear within the next few years (I shall say few months...) in order to benefit 100% from the different platforms that exist (tablets, smartphones...). And probably this will come from a new comer, as e-retailers for most of them are already too big to try some of these actions.

If some of you owns any kind of examples or great websites to check which are highly innovative in terms of e-merchandising, I'd be thrilled to know. Feel free to comment on this blog about it.

What do you think about it?

Some Thoughts About My Kindle Fire

Since this Christmas, I am the owner of a Kindle Fire from Amazon.
I already own at home:

• A Samsung laptop
• An Ipad (1st generation) which is still working great
• A Blackberry bold

But I was eager to add a new peace, especially for all what is to read things. Here are my different uses of the gears I own at home:

• The Laptop: I use it to blog, to do my Exel's spreadsheets, sometimes to go on the Internet, to upload photos. I still believe nothing replace a computer when it comes to editing and creating things.
• The Ipad: I use it to watch youtube videos mostly, which I do a lot. I also use it to read my Flipboard, or some newspapers like Lefigaro, or the Huffington Post. I also uses several apps, but to be honest, it is not something I do on a daily basis.
• The Blackberry:   I use it for social media usage, such as tweeting, Foursquare's checks in, or Facebook reading. I also uses it to get fast info, for example on websites like wikipedia.

What I use the Kindle for:

• Read books: I got couple of books, and I am pretty happy about it. It is easy to read
• Watch US channels. I don't know how, nor why, but I am able to watch some US TV channels on the Kindle... Like History Channel, Showtime, ESPN, ABC... Love it
• Read websites and blogs: I love the screen and the size is perfect. I love the flipboard app.

I love the Kindle Fire, and I believe this is what I use the most now. The size, the screen quality, the battery life are just great. Also, what I love is how sharp the digital keyboard is. I have always been a fan of Blackberry because I always consider nothing compares to a hard concrete keyboard. The Kindle fire is amazing, especially when I go to conferences to take notes, even though I experienced some problems after a little while, the app to take notes (I use the draft of the email app) tends to bug and freeze. Maybe there are better applications I need to look for. Also, I love the book store. Really well done, it is always easy to find what you are looking for.

What I don't like

• The limited number of applications: All the apps I own are great. But Kindle is working on Android, which counts a huge number of apps. Nevertheless, I can't download (at least officially) any of them! This is silly.
• The bug when I take long notes as I already said.
• The OS is not as simple as the Ipad's one. At the beginning, you struggle to closes some apps or to look for them. But after a while, you adapt. But there is still room for improvement.
• Some videos I can't watch on websites, due to restriction of the web browser. Nevertheless, it is ten times less frequent than the problems I have on my Ipad...

I highly recommend the Kindle, which is cheap compared to the competition, and propose a great added value to a computer, smartphone and traditionnal tablet; 

Social Media And Retailing: How Lidl Uses Facebook In France

Social medias uses in business and retailing starts to be common. Most of retailers on a fan page on Facebook, and sometimes a Twitter account. But today I wanted to write about not a standard retailer, but a hard discount retailer that have decided to communicate on social media : Facebook.

Lidl is one of the largest retailer in the world. Despite a low cost model, short product ranges and very little advertising, it has been able to spead all around Europe, and (even though they don't communicate their sales figures) it is believed they are in the top 5 ranking of the largest retailers.

Lidl has never communicate much. It is in its strategy. As a hard discounter, its goal is to minimize every cost possible, in order to sell its goods as cheap as possible, maximizing the mergins. 

But Lidl has changed over the time, as the hard discount model is starting to go in limbo. They have hence decided last year in France to create a Facebook Fan's page. After one year, they already have 280 000 fans! What is even more impressive, is that they have way more fans than retailers that are at least twice bigger than them in France: Intermarché (200 K), Leclerc (133 K) and Carrefour (the largest one with only 34 Ks). 

We must say that a year ago, Lidl has made a large advertising campaigns on its leaflets in order to launch their fan page.  But nevertheless, even though they don't communicate that much now about it, the fan community growth pace is still fast.

What does Lidl post on it?

Well, mostly, promotions and products reviews. Clearly they don't have a budget to animate the community, like some other brands have (proposing games, specific discounts, content such as receipes...). Despite the little budget they own (once again there are only two people dealing with the whole Internet presence, which is also encompassing emailing campaigns and the website maintenance), they really bond with the customers, as they have a 10% interaction rate on most of their posts...

Some thoughts about Lidl

Even though Lidl is a concept based on private label, and on proposing no brands, Lidl is not a no-brand, it is actually a strong brand, with which customers bond. This is the reason why they have been able to create such a connection with their community.

Social Media in Lidl Strategy

Lidl is evolving fast, leaving the traditional hard discount concept to a more modern one. Nicolas Calo, the communication manager of Lidl France, declares that the social media investment is part of the overal strategy of the group to modernize their concept. He also adds that "the concept goes more toward modernity and proximity: that is what Facebook is bringing to us: Modernity of communication, and proximity to our clientele".

I find that amazing that Lidl, despite very little budgets compare to its competition, despite a concept that is based on very little advertizing and customer service, has been able to become one of the best success story in the Facebook's retailing world.

What do you think about it?

Should You Still Believe In Foursquare?

I have been a big fan of Foursquare since I have tried it couple of years ago. I believe the technology is great, and you can clearly see how businesses could use the service to generate in-store traffic, and therefore revenues.

But for a little while, whereas geolocalization has been a hot trend lately, Foursquare seems to struggle. I recently read an article about why people stop using Foursquare. And I must admit I understand them. After a fast start, with a high adoption, a lot of place registered, and even some specials. 

But still, with all this potential, they haven't been able to convert the service to its full potential. Still I believe Foursquare has a bright future ahead of it. 

Recently, Foursquare raised $41 millions in order to keep on building its capacity to generate revenues. Let's hope it will be enought to buy some time to develop the business model: Foursquare is worth $600 million but only got $2 millions in revenues last year.

Mon feedback sur les salons M Direct Expo, SEMO, et relation client 2013

Comme tous les ans, (ou presque), je me suis rendu aux salons du marketing direct, des études marketing, de la relation client. Cette année, comme ce fut le cas ces dernières années, ces salons ont été rassemblés autour d'un même événement, ce qui est plutôt intelligent, car cela permet de pouvoir voir l'ensemble des intervenants sur la même date.

Mais cette année, plus que les années précédentes, je fus déçus:

• Les conférences étaient à mon goût de moins bonne qualité. Hormis l'excellente conférence sur le neuromarketing, qui a elle seule valait le coût de venir, les autres n'étaient pas forcément aussi intéressante.
• La taille du salon a réellement fondue. Certainement que les prix pour la participation à ce type d'événement à augmenter fortement. Qui plus est avec la crise, beaucoup d'intervenants ont certainement souhaité faire des économies. J'ai participé à d'autres salons professionnels ces 2 dernières années, et pour avoir discuté avec des exposants, beaucoup ont décidé d'abandonner ce type de salon.
• Peu d'intervenants réellement majeurs étaient présent. Ce particulièrement dans les études. Pa de IRI, de Kantar, pour les études, de Soft Computing (qui était présent il y a quelques années), de Microsoft pour le MD. Alors certains étaient quand même présent, notamment Orange et La Poste, mais cela manque de locomotive, qui pourrait faire bouger l'ensemble du marché.
• Une mention spécial pour le SEMO, le salon des études. D'une qualité exceptionnel il y a 5 ans par la qualité des exposants et des conférences, qui remplissait le palais des congrès, il a fondu quasiment totalement. Très dommage.

Je trouve très dommage que ce salon que je qualifierai "du Marketing", n'existe quasiment plus. La France est un grand pays du marketing, avec des agences de communication renommées comme Publicis, des vrais experts des études tel qu'IRI, pour ne citer qu'eux... J'espère vraiment que les organisateurs arriveront à repartir du bon pas, et que les différents acteurs du marketing arriveront à relever le défi de construire un salon digne de ce nom pour la profession.

Neuromarketing Conference In Paris

I attended couple of weeks ago a neuromarketing conference held in Paris during the MD Expo.

I did not know much about Neuromarketing before coming to this event. My knowledge was mainly based on the Neuromarketing blog, which I actually read quite often.

The conference had a prestigious panel: 

• Henri Kaufman was the host, and animator of the conference.
• Pierre Gomy  Marketing director at France Millward Brown France, which talked about the company's experiences held in Great Britain.
• Mark Van Rymenant  founder of Netway, a Belgian company specialized in Neuromarketing since 1997.
• Marie de Linage Europe CRM manager Sony, which talked about her experience with neuromarketing techniques.
• Bruno Teboul, an expert of neuromarketing, soon to get his Phd, he is studying the usage of neurosciences for marketing purposes around the globe. He is also the author of "L'Absolu Marketing",  which explains all the new marketing trends from the big data to neuromarketing. I haven't read it yet, but I am planning to soon.

Here are some highlights of the conference:

Read Montague's Study

Neuromarketing has really emerged in 2003, when Read Montague studied thanks to IRM scans 50 volunteers to taste Coke and Pepsi sodas. It appears that out of these 50 people, 49 prefered Pepsi while blindfolded, but once people knew which brand was which soda, the results were reversed. The study showed how brands could change one product perception. Its since this research thanks to IRM that neuromarketing really started.

The button to buy

There is no real trigger in the brain that you need to push for someone to buy. Though there are some well known now zones that have a key role during the decision making process. There is such a high complexity in the brain that the interconnections between the different zones makes it impossible to resume the action of neuromarketing by simply pressing one button.

The brain map

Thanks to the important work of research around neurosciences, scientists have been able to set up a map of the brain. There are 52 zones in the brain that have been noticed. Each zones have different roles. Actually, the researches have also established that human brains are similar to other human brains by 99%. 

 It is thanks to this map that we are now able to understand and make experimentations through IRM and use them.

Why Neuromarketing Matters

• 5% of what we do is conscious
• 95% is unconscious

Marketers have spent years to work on the conscious part, trying to understand the logical aspect of customers' decision making process. But now neuromarketing techniques allow to explore the other 95%.

Also:

• 85% of decision made are based on emotions
• 15% by rational thoughts.

How That Works?

There are 3 techniques that are used:

• Eye Tracking: We use technologies following the eye movements in order to see what catches the attention of someone.
• Electrophalogram: The most used techniques
• IRM: The most precised one, but the most difficult to use. 

About the IRM technique, most of the time it is used only on 6 to 8 people, because it is pricy, difficult to get (you need to use hospital material), but also because it is enough to have usable results.

Even though it is the most famous technique, it only represents 15% of the researches conducted.

Culture, Sociology and the Brain

There is a certain "plasticity" to the brain. Indeed, people from certain cultures may have been used to certain cultural or social things that may shape the way they percieve things. Even though studies seem to tell that there is no particularity. For example, the color red is associated with stopping, because the color red has been chosen for the red lights. You may change the red light color for yellow, it will take a while for people to adapt and the red to get back to a normal color. 

So far I believe it is too early to say if culture and society may impact neuromarketing results.

Sony Case's Study

Sony Europe had issues with the different local marketing departments to implement the European guidelines about Sony's brand content. Most of the time, local branches argued that the European guidelines were sometimes not adapted to local market. Sony decided to use neuromarketing in order to test then its messages and brand components thanks to the eye tracking techniques. Through small tests, on some emailing campaigns, they experienced great results, which pushed them to experiment more. It helped Sony to rationalized its European guidelines, thanks to the neuromarketing results they got. 

I will post soon a new note about what I think about neuromarketing. The aim of this article is to sare with you the great knowledge I got thanks to this conference.

Carrefour: Un Combat Pour La Liberté: Mon opinion

Il y a quelques semaines de celà, j'ai eu l'occasion de rencontrer Yves Soulabail lors d'une conférence se déroulant à Paris Dauphine. Yves est bien connu du monde de la distribution pour son ouvrage "Carrefour un combat pour la liberté". Je connaissais aussi déjà bien son oeuvre, visitant très régulièrement le blog Carrefouruncombatpourlaliberte.fr . 

Le Pitch

1976, Carrefour existe depuis plus de dix ans, et la croissance folle du début est difficile à maintenir. Carrefour est en pleine remise en question. Cette année, notamment Etienne Thil, directeur marketing et communication, et les directeurs de Carrefour, décide de lancer les produits libres, qui deviendront bientôt les MDD, qui à l'époque est une véritable révolution dans un monde de la distribution dominé par les marques (Nestlé, Coca Cola, etc...).

Ce que j'ai aimé

• Énormément de moments historiques de la distribution française (fondation de Leclerc, début de Carrefour, lancement des MDD chez les concurrents) sont présentés dans ce livre.
• L'incroyable précision et le détail des données du livre. On y apprend les volumes, les chiffres d'affaires, les marges, etc... Bien évidemment, elles sont très loin de celles de nos jours, mais dans un monde de la distribution où il y a énormément de secret, c'est formidable d'avoir pu aller si loin.
• Un ouvrage rare, qui donne beaucoup d'informations sur l'histoire (même avant les produits libres) de Carrefour. Ces origines, sa manière de fonctionner, les hommes importants. Carrefour reste, malgré les problèmes actuelles, une formidable histoire, qui part d'une petite épicerie il y a 50 ans à devenir la 2ème entreprise mondiale de distribution.
• Une vrai leçon de bon sens et de principe pour les distributeurs. Il remet bien en place ce qui est vraiment important pour un distributeur, le volume, l'image prix, les basiques, la gestion des hommes... Etc. Une très grande leçon, que chaque direction de grande distribution devrait garder en tête.

Ce que j'ai moins aimé

• Parfois, le livre est un peu brouillon, car très axé sur donner de l'information "brute" (notes de réunions, articles, données chiffrées, etc...). Ce qui rend la lecture parfois difficile, sur certains moment, surtout au milieu.
• J'aurai aimé avoir plus d'informations sur Bernardo Trujilo, car je sais qu'Yves est le spécialiste de ce génie très méconnu du monde de l'entreprise. Il a façonné l'ensemble de la distribution mondiale, néanmoins il reste quasiment inconnu du grand public. Néanmoins reconnaissons que cela n'était pas le sujet principal du livre. Peut être pour un autre livre?

En résumé

Ce livre est une formidable leçon au sujet de la grande distribution. Il retrace avec détail et précision les phases de lancement des produits libres, et explique bien dans quel mesure ce lancement a changé profondémment le monde de la distribution, mais aussi donné une longueur d'avance à Carrefour.

Je le recommande à tous professionels de la grande distribution.

Auchan's Entreprise Feedback Management: Leveraging Store's Feedback

Enterprise feedback management is an important part of a comprehensive customer relationship management strategy. EFM aims to collect and organize customer's feedback from whereever it may come. With nowadays over connected world, feedback may come from in store comments, emails, mailings, social media, phone calls, blogs, among others.

I have been reading in Linéaires an article about the CRM manager at Auchan Jérôme Desreumaux, one of the largest retailer in France, selling mostly fast moving goods. Each Auchan stores in France welcome every day on average 10 000 different customers! Therefore leveraging the informations these customers may give can be a powerful tool in order to improve the commercial concept. Auchan recieves every year 200 000 feedback. It is important to know how to give meaning to these feedbacks, but also it is very important to know how to collect those.

What is interesting in this article, is the split between the different sources of feedback:

• 25% comes from store comments left in a ballot by customers
• 25% comes from employees from the frontdesks who type in customers' comments
• 25% comes from notes taken by store and department managers
• 25% comes from other media, such as mailing, emailing...

What is fascinating, is that still 75% of comments come from the store! Indeed, in retail, stores remain the main medium of communication. 

It is always more difficult to get these insights, as it is difficult to automate feedback in store. It is interesting to see how Auchan succeeds in getting so many feedback from stores.

Conversion rate: Working on the other 96%

I was listening to the radio this week end when I heard a very interesting interview of a Google France representative. He was discussing the kind of added value Google Analytics products could deliver to one company. 

"A good conversion rate in the web today turns around 2 to 4%, the goal of Google Analytics is to make the best of the other 96%."

Now that e-commerce is a mature market, and e-merchand websites tend to have a large volume of visits every day, it is important to be efficient. For instance, Jean-Emile Rosenblum, CEO of Pixmania France, is shutting down its stores he opened couple of years ago, saying "it costs less money to open stores than to lead a new customer online"!

Indeed, in terms of efficiency, every visits to a website must count. And there are different ways to see how you may create value from a visit which did not lead to a purchase:

• Some of the value created is by advertisement: You may advertise for some products which will give you some ad money
• Some of the value is about the data you may collect:  Why didn't the shopper completed its purchase? This analytics is possible thanks to adword.
• We all know that people don't necessarily buy the first time they visit a website. The ability of the company to send the proper message after this lost visitor leave. Being able to keep a track of when he stopped to trigger a new visit is also something important.

Some Thoughts About Barnes & Nobel Falls

I have always loved Barnes & Nobel store concepts. When I go to the US, I love to go to one of its shops, and to hang around, to see what kind of books I can find interesting. I have never been really a big book reader (even though I recently own a Kindle Fire, which I count on to really boost my reading habits), but there is something about its concept that gives you the will to sit down and read. 

Barnes & Nobel is about customer experience, to provide you a large choice of cultural products and, a top of the line shopping experience. But with the rise of online competition, Barnes & Nobel results have not stopped to fall.

There are several reasons for Barnes &Noblel's problems:

• Dematerialization: : Cultural goods tends to dematerialize more than other products. Now music can be downloaded, same thing for movies, video games, or even books.
• Retailing costs are very high compared to E commerce website. Therefore it is almost impossible to be aligned with online competition and keep being profitable.

To me, Barnes & Nobel has always been a great example on how shopping experience and customer relationship could create value for a retailer. But unfortunately, due to the fast changes of the competition landscape, Barnes and Nobel were not able to keep up. 

So what should have they done? Of course, it is easier to say than to do, but there were other strategies to take into consideration:

• Find new correlated products with high mergins to be able to compensate with the decrease of its traditionnal goods. We can think of electronic goods, even though this market is also tough, or maybe premium grocery products, to match with its positionning.
• They could have sold some part of its real estate: Not to shut down stores, but to limit the square meters of each stores to lower the cost of production.
• They probably should have found a way to create added value, in order to set apart from the basic price comparison.

Virgin, a cultural goods retailer in France, is also shutting down its activities. It is sad to see that we are in an era where we never consumed more cultural goods and services, but with a very poor health of the business.

I really hope Barnes & Nobel's will be able to find a solution.

Lance Armstrong: The Limit Of Storytelling

I wanted to share you some thoughts I have about the big scandal that happened couple of weeks ago. After years of having denied he took performance enhancing drugs, Lance Armstrong was forced to admit publicly his system. Of course, it has been a big scandal.

Lance Armstrong is a controversial character.

•  On one hand, he has been a great champion, a great professional, who has had a strong will power to win 7 Tour de France in a row. Doped or not, it is still a performance.
• He has been a role model, for its capacity to overcome his cancer.
• On the other one, there has always been suspicious about his drug use. Also, as a cyclist, other professionals have always pictured Armstrong as a cocky person, very selfish.

Now, I don't want to take a side. But what is true, is that the whole story around Armstrong may have been too nice. The whole story Armstrong created around his character allowed him to become way bigger than his sports.

Storytelling is a communication technique that has been around for quite a while now. Not a global company, not a political campaign, are built without a story to give meaning to it. The whole concept is to be able to create an authentic story around a concept. But sometimes it has some limits, especially when there is no true story behind, or when the story is twisted.

But the story was too nice: probably too well written. And the problem is now everything falls apart.

My whole point is to say: You should not use storytelling when there is nothing authentic behind. Because when the true story unveils then everything you built breaks down. 

Some Thoughts About Neuromarketing

I had the opportunity to read couple of weeks ago the excellent work Yasmina Chikh made to publish her thesis. She picked a very interesting and controversial topic: Neuromarketing.

Actually, the hype around neuromarketing seemed to have vanished. Indeed, a lot of work have been published about it, especially about how ethical this discipline may be, but also because of all the scientific work that has been undertaken in this field. I believe that now neuromarketing is operationnal, in terms of techniques. 

Nevertheless, and that is what Yasmina has underlined in her work, ethical issues remain. How far can we go to trigger a sale? Should we use these techniques, that are not based on arguments, but on irrational behaviors someone may get, because of how our brain functions?

In France, very few cases are available, as neuromarketing is forbidden. But I don't believe it will remain for long. European large companies have embraced the techniques, and soon, lobbies will force the European Union to validate its use in our country. 

Now will we see a lot of neuromarketing campaigns? It still needs to be seen, because these techniques are pretty pricy. You need a sophisticated equipment, most of the time you need to go through a university in order to use it. I believe the challenge of this kind of field is to be cost efficient, and to have clear results in the real life. So far, most of the findings have been made by scientific studies, and not yet in the real business field.

What I also really liked in Yasmina's report, is how extensive she has been in listing all the techniques you may use in neuromarketing.You should try to add her on LinkedIn, she may share with you that work (in French though).

Why You Should Not Spend Too Much Times In Concept Stores

As a retail and customer relationship management expert, I spend a lot of time in stores. As I have said most of the time, even though retailing online is growing fast, and customer experience in the E-commerce is constantly improving, the main customer relationship medium remains the retail. 

A lot of companies have understood it:

• Nespresso, who built its business model and customer service excellence on the Internet, has built a strong store network in order to be closer to its clientele.
• Apple doesn't stop opening stores, even though they are an hardware company, in order to master the way its products are distributed. 
• French E-commerce leader Cdiscount has strong ambitions in developping a store network.
• French Mayo and mustard producer Maille (Unilever group) owns two stores in France where they sell some premium products.

Most of the time, the idea of these companies are to use the point of sale as a showroom which emphasizes on the products, and on the greatness of their brands. Some may earn money (I believe it is the case of Apple's store), some are pure advertisement (like direct banking company ING Direct, or online Internet provider Free).

Not only "suppliers" or service companies are opening concept stores. Some retailers also have concept stores in order to prepare the future of their banners. One of the most well known concept store that has been launched those past few years was Carrefour Planet. Not only because it was the concept store of the largest retailer in the world beside Walmart, but also because it was innovative.

As a pro, I am seeking for those kind of initiatives to visits. Because they always have the most updated tools , but also because you can see in it what is the best service one company can provide to its customers.

But it is always interesting to put them into prospectives. Indeed, with concept stores, most of the time, you are in front of a non profitable store: a lot of tests are put in place in order to see what suits the most the customer, and what is the most efficient. It is always important to have that in mind. This is the reason why, it is always important to understand where profitability is, and where the cosmetic part is.

This is the reason why, you should not spend too much time in concept stores, because most of the time it can't be implemented at a large scale.

Why We Should Believe In Costco In France

I wanted to share with you some thoughts I had about the conference I attended about Costco at Paris Dauphine. As I have explained in a previous post, I really believe in the concept, and that it has some chances to grow in France. But during the Q&A session, I could feel how skeptical a large part of the audience was. Here are some of the issues they have pointed out, which I must admit will be some challenges to overcome for Costco in France:

• France is a very tough market. Carrefour, Casino and Auchan are among the largest grocery retailers in the world, and they excel in retailing. Furthermore, even though these 3 companies cruises in the international market, they have an even stronger local competitor, which gains marketshares month after Months: Leclerc. How can Costco find his place in between?
• France proposes very low margins: Due to the competition, prices are low, and therefore the French market tends to be less "profitable" in terms of %margins. 
• France has specific concepts, and don't know how a membership wholesale works. It will be difficult to explain the concept and to convince French people to pay 55€ to become members.

I know all of those problems: I experience them every day as a category manager at DIA. France is for sure a very difficult market. But what I notice, is that even though people who raise these issues are for sure retail experts, they are very pessimistic and negatives. We all know how negative French mindset can be. What these people calls obstacles I'd rather consider them as challenges. Here is how I see it:

• Sure the French market has a tough competition. But isn't Walmart a tough competitor in the US? Walmart succeeded in settling down in England, where there is Tesco, and where Carrefour failed couple of years ago. Also, they are in Japan, also a tough country where Carrefour failed.
• The French market proposes low margins? Costco knows how to work with low margins. And they know how to work with it everywhere. Yes it will be difficult, but Costco knows how to work with international suppliers, so they should be able to get strong partnership even in France.
• People don't know how a membership wholesaler works? Japanese got it, English got it. As long as you propose true advantages to a customer, he will get it. Costco has strong ambitions in France, so they should have the money to communicate on how it works.

Something that marked me, in the answers Costco's CEO gave, is that it seems they don't pay much attention to the competition's landscape. Indeed, they have their own concept, a unique concept, and therefore, they don't really have a true competitor, that proposes the same service. In the retail world, where pricing is one of the single factor of differenciation, I think it is a tremendous technique. They know that if they deliver what Costco's knows how to deliver, things would work. And I believe it is the right mindset. By focusing too much on competition and how a market is at a specific time, you don't focus on what is really important: satisfying customers.

Retail is Art: Gregoire Kaufman's Book "Retailart"

Grégoire Kaufman is working as a top manager of Group Carrefour. As an exeperienced manager, he has sailed the seven seas to look for new store concepts, and to study how different countries distributes fast moving consumer goods. 

Grégoire believes retail is somehow an art. It also pictures well the social and cultural landscape of one region or country. It is always interesting to visit stores in foreign countries, because you will always encounter new ideas, products you don't know, and different ways to promote products.

He has already published a bunch of his thoughts and pictures in his blog, couple of years ago. Unfortunately, he does not publish anymore (even though I understand: he is very busy as a professionnal). Nevertheless, he went a step further, as he published an online book, you will find on Blurb's website.

If you are a retailing professional, or simply curious about Gregoire's work, I highly recommend you to have a look at his work. 

What is very funny with retailing, is that the rules of the industry are very simple, and basically to keep it simple. Most of retailers have been inspired by Bernardo Trujillio, who held seminars for most of nowadays retail tycoons' founders (Carrefour, Auchan, Darty for French people)... But when you see how those rules are applied in different countries, you can clearly see the cultural aspect of retailing). If nothing looks like more a starbucks than an other starbucks, you should check out how in a global company like Walmart or Carrefour adapts to its clientele.

Here's a picture I liked of Gregoire's blog, about how an Argentinian Carrefour took advantage of the Soccer World Cup to animate its store.

Costco France's Conference at Paris Dauphine

Yesterday I attended a conference organized by my former business school, Paris Dauphine, Master "Distribution et relation client". This master often organizes conferences around the topic of retail and customer relationship management, and we had the opportunity to meet with CEO of Costco France, Gary Swindells.

The topic is very interesting to me, as I have always been a fan of this commercial concept:

•  I used to be a card member while I lived in the US.
• When I came back to France I had the opportunity to prepare a presentation for Auchan's marketing department, as I was eager to convince people in France of how good the concept was.
• I asked Lars Oloffson while he was CEO of Carrefour what he thought about the concept, if he was eager to try it in Europe, especially as he owns Promo cash, a btob card member wholesale chain. He responded to me that it was interesting, that they owned in Brazil Atacadao which is a concept close to Costco, and that they were on their way to launch a test, in the northern part of France. I don't think the project ever happened though.

It was also a good opportunity to see how Dauphine changes, as the main hall and the conference room has been fully renovated. It has been also my pleasure to have the opportunity to meet with Yves Soulabail, one of the main expert of Carrefour's history in France, but also an expert in Bernardo Trujillo's history, the person who invented the "modern retail". He owns a blog I visit almost daily, Carrefour un combat pour la liberté.

What is Costco

Costco is a warehouse, where both professionals and individuals may found products in large formats, at a great price/kg. In order to access their stores, you need to own a membership car you need to pay. Here is a great presentation.

Key figures and quotes of the conference:

• Costco works with a sales margin of 14%, which is actually very low compared to what other retailers have usually. But actually, I don't think that in this margin they count the money they get from the membership fee people needs to pay to get in ($55, $2 billion in membership yearly). What is interesting with the concept is that the membership fees is somehow the profitability they reach with each customers up front, even before they have bought any products... Which allows them to propose better pricing.
• $92 billion expected in 2012, which is I believe the 5th retailer worldwide.
• $148 millions in sales per stores, 13 205 m2 per stores. They even own a store in Korea that makes $478 M a year!
• 4 000 listed products: 3 500 listed permanently  500 which are in & out promotions, that goes from lobsters to cars, to pants...
• Customers visit stores on avarage every 10 days, which is actually high... I did not use to go that often...
• Costco don't communicate, meaning they don't do any flyers, any TV or radio promotions. They just have sometimes local campaigns for store openings. 
• Sometimes, they lend parts of their stores for "road shows", people that comes with a specific offer, and that shows products. 
• They believe they would be profitable once they would reach 3 or 4 stores! Which is not a lot actually.
• They forecast to own 10 to 12 stores in 10 years, and 20 in 15 years. You can clearly see they have a map and are eager to invest large amounts of money to settle in France.
• The average basket is 130$

Best Wishes for 2013

It has been a while I haven't posted something on my blog. As some of you may know, 2012 has been a very busy year on a personnal basis. I have moved to another appartment, became a landlord of my former appartment, and couple of days ago, I embraced parenthood. All these changes have kept me away from this blog. Also, as a category manager of DIA France, I extended my perimeter with new categories to deal with, which also took a lot of my available time.

2012 has in a certain sense allow me to grow my level of responsabilities, and I am quite happy about it, as I have always been eager to take some, both in my professionnal and personnal life.

As I have said, couple of years ago, while the beginning of the subprime crisis started, I expected as certain expert thought that the end of the crisis would approach in 2012. I believe my forecast was not that bad. But I don't believed that actually, 2013 would also be a tough year.

I have never been pessimistic, and I believe that 2013 will be a difficult year. But also, it will be great. Great because we will be forced to look after new opportunites, new way to create values. It is when times are difficult that you are actually forced to do more, and better.

I wish to all of you a happy 2013 year. I don't want in this post to make any forecasts, because 2013 will obviously be full of surprise. But what I wish you, is that 2013 will propose you the challenges and the opportunity that you need.