Quelques réflexions sur le rachat de DIA par Carrefour

Cela fait un peu plus de 6 mois maintenant que j'ai quitté la société DIA . DIA n'a jamais fait autant la une des magazines que depuis quelques semaines depuis que la maison mère espagnole a décidé de vendre les activités en France. Ce vendredi, nous venons d'apprendre que Carrefour a déposé une offre de 600 millions d'euros pour acquérir l'intégralité de la société DIA France.

Pour ceux qui ne le savent peut être pas, Carrefour possédait la société DIA avant de la céder en 2011 via un Spin Off. Ce Spin Off avait été décidé par l'ancienne direction de Carrefour, Lars Olofsson, avec comme but de revaloriser l'action du groupe Carrefour, qui à l'époque n'allait pas au mieux. L'opération avait bien marché, puisqu'alors que l'action Carrefour continuait de baisser, l'action DIA n'a cessé de grimper, la société espagnole ayant d'excellents résultats en Espagne, ainsi qu'en Amérique Latine.

Aujourd'hui, que va donc faire Carrefour de ces points de ventes? Très clairement, le PDG actuel du groupe Georges Plassat souhaite consolider sa présence en France, en réinvestissant une partie du cash généré par la vente de certains pays (comme la Colombie) dans les activités nationales. Carrefour ainsi acquiert plus de 800 points de vente, ce qui augmente une fois de plus son maillage national.

Mais ce qui va vraiment être intéressant de suivre, c'est de voir ce que Carrefour va faire de ces points de ventes. Voici pour moi la meilleure manière d'intégrer ces points de ventes:

• Consolider la présence en centre ville: DIA compte plus de 150 points de ventes en centre villes, la plupart à Paris. Carrefour devra très certainement en vendre une partie importante, mais bien évidemment consolidera ses positions en région parisienne, et revendra les points de vente devant être céder à des concurrents n'ayant pas réellement de présence dans la concurrent mais avec des ambitions (Auchan, Intermarché notamment) 

•  Récupérer une partie des plus grands points de vente pour les transformer en supermarché. Le seul soucis est que les "grands" DIA font entre 800 et 1200 M2, ce qui en font de petits supermarchés, et souvent dans des zones de chalandises peu intéressantes (soit avec un hypermarché pas très loin, soit en bas d'une cité HLM). Il faudra voir comment Carrefour gère ces points de vente.
• Mais pour moi, l'idée de génie serait de récupérer ces points de vente pour en faire des Drive déporté. En effet, le maillage de DIA dans certaines régions est très bon, la taille des points de vente parfait pour en faire des entrepôts Drive, et en plus, comme je le disais, souvent ces points de vente sont sur des zones de chalandise concurrente de gros supermarché ou d'hypermarché.

Peut être même que Carrefour va développer de nouveaux concept commerciaux pour tirer un maximum de ces points de vente. En tout cas, tout cela va être passionnant à suivre.

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Why There Are Still Interests To Invest In Mature Market

I wanted to discuss this topic on this blog after I was chatting with one of my supplier about why they should invest in the French market.  Indeed, he was arguing that European markets, as they are mature, are not a priority for the investments of its company, as the growth is now in the emerging markets.

This is to me a cliché. Indeed, sales growth settles for sure in emerging markets, were a large number of people experience a high growth of salary and lifestyle. And hence, as you start from the bottom, there is a lot of room for growth. And a lot of big companies have invested a lot in those countries, with success.

I am not going to hide the fact that indeed a lot of US and European companies have been able to meet their growth target thanks to their investments in emerging countries. But as the time go buy, we have seen that investing in the emerging market, even though still a priority, is as important as investing in mature market.


A company needs to be able to compete in a mature market
Hence, how could a company not be able to compete in a mature market if it wants to stay in the long run? Earning fast marketshares surfing on the economical growth of India or China is an easy game, especially because this growth most of the time has been financed with the money from mature market. But once the market is mature, and growth harder to get, then you need to be able to make profit out of it.

And competing in a mature market requires for sure large investment.

Mature market is often where innovation comes from 
In mature market, you need to have concrete and real innovation. You can't fake it as your competition puts a lot of money down inR&D. It is once you are able to innovate in a mature market that you will be able to set presence abroad.
Most of the time, emerging markets are reached with low cost versions of the European products. It is what was made for instance by l'Oréal in India, where they sold to beging one portion shampoo bottles to allow people to buy from time to time shampoo.

Mature markets are reliable
Mature market don't experience much roller coaster, which can be the case in emerging markets. Companies' status (leaders, challengers, premium niche) are challenged on a daily basis as new competition can show up at any time.
Also as we have seen this year, a lot of large European and US companies have delivered delivered deceiving figures due to currency changes. Mature markets don't have floating currencies as emerging market does. It has been the case of most of European retailer such as Carrefour, DIA or Casino.

Emerging market will become less and less attractive
Emerging markets growth are slowing down, competition becomes tougher, wages are going up: Emerging markets are going soon to reach a plateau where they will need to change their modells to keep up with the pace. And as they are loosing competitivity, then old markets start to be attractive.

It all comes back to the first point, a company need to be able to compete in a mature market. Because I believe that at the end of the day, this is what really matter: having a reliable profitable business.


What do you think about it?

What If Electricity Was Becoming Free?

Obviously the title of this post has probably triggered your imagination, or at least your attention. It seems to be an impossible thought nowadays, while we still have not find a solution to stop using fossil energy, meanwhile gas and oil gas are still growing at a steady pace. 

As the Ukranian crisis is still unfolding we can see how it is vital for countries to get energy. Jeremy Rifkin, an expert forecaster has envisioned a new industrial revolution where fossil energy would have disappeared, and where we would have found renewable sources to replace it. This revolution would make electricity almost free as the cost will dive dramatically.

Seems unrealistic? Actually, this very interesting article of Le Nouvel Economiste explains why and how it could be possible. 

First of all, every industrial revolution have been possible thanks to a new energy source. The first one was possible thanks to the steam machine. The second one has been based on fossil sources.

Secondly, the rise of countries like India, China and Brasil, and their growing need of energy sources to produce more will very soon create high tensions on the energy market, which will speed up the need for new sources in mass. 

Also, what make new industrial revolutions is not only the arrival of a new source of energy, but its convergence with new communication media. Nowadays, we already have the new media, but we are still craving for a new energy source that will allow this economic boom.

What the author envision is a new way to consider renewable energy. What is great with renewable energy (wind, solar...) is that on the opposite of fossil energy is accessible anywhere at a low cost, whereas you need to dig deep to get gas for example. That means that instead of having huge plants regrouped in one place, you may have renewable source close to the place where it will be used, which will lower the cost of both exploiting and transporting. 

Of course, a lot of new technologies need to be found to store and produce this renewable source. Also, we need to invest in those new technologies once it will appear. But it will dramatically lower the price of energy, the same way the Internet lowered the price of access to information. It will obviously also have a great positive impact on the environment, and solve a lot of the problems of pollution we have nowadays.

As a result, whereas energy accessibility remains nowadays one of the biggest conflict issue, the access to information and network will soon become even more problematic as a result. 

I believe that his idea is genius, and it seems pretty possible this will happen. Now that you have read this article I am sure you will follow with another look what renewable energy will become, and how it may change the world.

#scops2014 : Compte rendu de la soirée

Malheureusement je n'ai pas pu cette année me rendre à la soirée des SCOPS 2014, organisée par le master distribution et relation client de l'université Paris Dauphine. Néanmoins, j'ai eu plusieurs échos de personnes qui étaient présentes pour cette événement, et il semblerait qu'une nouvelle fois, ce fut un très grand succès. 

La cérémonie est tenue depuis 3 ans au siège du MEDEF, dans une très belle salle, mais qui comporte selon mois 2 grands inconvénients:

1. Il n'y a pas d'endroits assez grand pour faire dans des conditions convenables un cocktail à la fin de de l'événement
2. Parce qu'il n'y a pas de réseau dans la salle où se passe l'événement! Cela fait 2 ans de suite que j'essaie de faire du live tweet, sans possibilité. Ce aui est dommage, surtout que le master est clairement moderne dans son approche.

En tout cas, la salle est bien plus grande que la salle historique de Dauphine Raymond Aaron, ce qui permet de pouvoir réunir un grand nombre de professionnels des métiers de la distribution, du marketing, de la communication et de la relation client.

Je vous laisse la présentation de la cérémonie, afin que vous puissiez apprécier l'excellent travail des étudiants du master.

En tout cas, je peux vous assurer que je serai là l'année prochaine!

Cérémonie des trophées SCOPS 2014 - Organisée par le Master 206 (Dauphine) from Mélodie Josset

Nutelladay.com Case Study: When Customers really take the power

Nutella is one of the most powerfull brand I know. It is quite often taken as an example on how strong branding can leverage high revenues. Despite some contreversy, especially linked to the use of palm oil in its recipe, people still love Nutella. Actually, Nutella is known for its vast group of fans, making it a great topic for tribe and social marketing guru.

Nevertheless, an article caught my attention about a recent story. Nutelladay.com is a website created by fans of the product in 2007, which were working on creating a Nutella Day to celebrate the product. In 2014, Ferrero, the producer of Nutella, decided to shut down the website, for no official reasons. My guess is that Ferrero wanted to take over the control of this popular website which became with the time a reference about their product. 

But social media and the Internet in overall has changed the game. When you have such a popular brand, it is nearly impossible to control how people use your brand for either positive messages (which was the case for Nutelladay.com) or negative (which is the case for activists against palm oil).

What is funny is that Nutella has such a high asset with its group of fans hooked to its product, but because of old corporate reflex they tried what they could to stop it to gain control.

What do you think about it?

Some Great Insights About The Drive Business In France

For those of you who are not French, and that don't really follow the French retail business, there is a massive trend that showed up about 5 years ago which is shaking the world of grocery retailing: Drive through grocery shopping.

People shop online, selecting their products and pay, then they collect their food right in their truck at the drive warehouse nearby. Most of the past 5 years market growth have been otbained thanks to this new retail channel.

Olivier Dauvers is a French Expert in retailing, and has been investigating these new operations for the longest time. He recently published a blog post (in French) about what are the questions people ask him the most about the drives. He is actually right now in the US to see how American retailers are adapting the concept there. 

Here are some of the great insights he provides:

• He forecasts that drive retail may count for about 10 to 20% marketshare once it will be mature
• There are two different business modell: one based on in store picking (an employee go into a brick&mortar store to pick up the delivery right on the shelves) or a real drive (a warehouse only selling online, where everything is conditionned to save space and time).
• The real business modell in the long term remain real drives, as it is the most cost efficient concept. Hence, once in a store pick up scheme an employee treat at best 85 products per hour, in a real drive, it will get 200 products... Of course, the real drive has thought everything through to save time in where the products are located to minimize the walking and roaming of the personnel.

Here is how the operating account of a drive works:

Gross margin: 25%

Wages: 9 to 11%

Investment: 3 to 4 %

Electricity and others: 1,5 to 2,5%

Advertising: 1%

Taxes: 1%

Banking fees: 0.5%

EBIT: 3 to 7%

You need to compare this data to the standard EBIT of a grocery retailer: 2 to 3% on average. Hence a well operated drive could be very profitable.

A third business model may soon be launched: A wharehouse which would prepare the deliveries, then send it to the point of sales. It would lower the cost of preparation and benefit from the point of sales to generate traffic and accessibility 

Some Thoughts On My New Approach With LinkedIn

For those of you who know me well, I have always been a high user of LinkedIn, and a fervent fan. I have found a lot of my previous jobs thanks to it, and as the service evolved (in a great way by the way), I have been able to keep in touch with a lot of my professionnal contacts, I have been able to look for job positions, to create the group of my master degree at Paris Dauphine, etc...

The service have been great, and at some point, once I started to have over 100 connections, I started to slow down with accepting people as most of the people wanting to get in contact with I did not know. I started to think: How can you keep in touch with over 100 people? Or if you keep in touch, how can you have possibly a strong relationship with that many people?

As the time went by, I started to get in contact with more and more people, and in fact, without even noticing it, I have over 400 people in my network... 

This is in fact a real blessing. That means that I have the opportunity to know and contact quickly a vast number of people that I would have never been able to keep up with, from different activities: finance, marketing, sales, international business, entrepreneurs...

Hence, I go more and more often on LinkedIn, especially to get information in the news feed they have. I am really amazed by the quality LinkedIn has been able to develop over the time. 

I really believe that they have changed the way people are approaching their career, and foremost, the way they are connecting with people.

You are doing a great job guys.

Where Does Ecommerce Stand In The Global Commerce World?

E-commerce is at a very interesting stage of its life. It has been about 20 years that Amazon has been founded by Jeff Bezos, and no one should question how big it became.

Depending on the activity related (music, electronic devices, groceries, traveling...), the E-commerce had sometimes a huge impact on the brick&mortar business. Let's take the most obvious example: Cultural goods such as music/video retailing business

• Some activities have been discontinued, like the DVD rental business, with the end of Blockbuster.
• Some activites are going in limbo like Barnes & Nobles
• Some activites have lower to their minimum levels, such as what Walmart or Carrefour in France does, proposing the minimum of range.

But now that E-commerce is entering into a phase of maturation, with lower growth rate, and actually basing its growth with multi channel strategies (opening drive through and in store pick ups for example), will the Internet business replace brick & mortar business? Will it become the leading retail channel? Will it remain the main source of sales growth?

I read an interesting article about this issue that I wanted to share with you. It shows the marketshare E-commerce owns of the whole Retail business in the US in 2013.

The chart shows clearly how important the E-commerce is growing, at a steady pace, but it also shows that traditionnal retailing remains the main show.

I also participated in a conference last year at Paris Dauphine that was leading to the very same remark. What is important, is to understand what will be in the next 10 years the share of e-commerce. I believe it will still grow at a steady pace, but it won't exceed maybe 10% (which remains a lot, as it may double in ten years). What will be interesting to see, is that obviously this growth will impact the way brick&mortar companies operate, and to see what kind of adjustment they will make.

I am jumping to the conclusion: There is room for growth in the brick&mortar world. What needs to be found is how you can create added value thanks to the contact and relationship you may create once in a point of sales.

Offre de stage #categorymanager au sein d' #intermarché envoyer vos contacts à @schriver sur Twitter

Bonjour à tous, Intermarché propose un stage de category manager sur le DPH (parfumerie-droguerie). 

N'hésitez pas à me contacter à ce sujet.

Avec 146 000 collaborateurs, 3 760 points de vente, 6 enseignes et un CA de 39.1 milliards d’Euros, le Groupement des Mousquetaires occupe depuis maintenant plus de 40 ans une place incontournable dans l’univers de la Distribution. Cette diversité et cette richesse nous les mettons au service de nos clients.

Pour le siège social d’Intermarché et de Netto basé en région parisienne à Bondoufle (près d'Evry - 91), nous recherchons des Stagiaires pour nos enseignes Intermarché et Netto.

Nous  vous proposons de découvrir, à travers un stage de 6 mois conventionné, à pourvoir immédiatement, la gestion et l’analyse de marché.

Missions :

Vous assisterez un Category Manager dans ses missions. Vous participerez notamment à la réalisation d'études de marché et à l'optimisation des performances produits en proposant des recommandations d'actions à venir.

Vos missions principales seront :

- Déterminer avec son category manager le plan publi-promotionnel sur son marché et en suivre les résultats,

- Analyser les performances et caractéristiques de son marché

- Contribuer aux réflexions sur les projets concept rayon

- Assurer une veille concurrentielle et innovation permanente (terrain et documentaire)

- Mettre en œuvre des plans d'actions (produits, gammes, promotions, merchandising, prix) permettant de développer la part de marché.

Les stages sont à pourvoir sur les univers :

-      Epicerie

-      Boissons

-       Parfumerie

Profil :

De formation Ecole de Commerce, nous souhaitons rencontrer des candidats ayant une réelle motivation pour le secteur de la grande distribution ayant si possible une connaissance des panels distributeurs.

Rigueur, capacité d'analyse, de synthèse et excellent relationnel seront également des qualités indispensables à votre réussite.

Rémunération : 900 euros nets/mois sur une base d'un stage de 6 mois minimum (temps plein).

Titre de transport remboursé à 50%  + accès au restaurant d'entreprise.

Poste basé à Bondoufle (91 - proche Evry)

Si vous souhaitez rejoindre nos équipes, faites-nous parvenir votre candidature (lettre, CV ) sous la référence StageCM :

E mail : recrutementitmai2treville@mousquetaires.com

How To Get The Stores Ready To The Showrooming Challenge

I want to thank my friend @ppc to have highlighted for me an interesting article that I actually read through, but with not much intention. As a lover of customer relationship management and retail, I have always believed that humans (the sales representative, or even the person in the call center) are the best medium for CRM, and that the point of sales is the best place to deliver great customer experience. 

Now that E commerce has sprung up and has took a significant part of the overal business, traditionnal stores are struggling. Indeed, a lot of businesses are seeing their operational results going in limbo, with higher costs and lower sales. 

But there are a lot of challenges in order to get back on track:

• Reset the wedges in order to get its human resources for customer service rather than operationnal tasks. This is the reason why you see more and more automatic cash register, RFID technologies to manage inventory, and so on... Also, a lot of company, like Carrefour, have decided to lower their headquarters number of employees in order to redeploy people in store. 
• Find new ways to advice customers, based on new technologies, like augmented reality, or the use of tablets, and have more product demonstrations.
• And also, to me the most important: Find a new way to evaluate store economical performance. Indeed, ubiquity and showrooming implies that customers may purchase at your company their products, but maybe not in your point of sales (they may finish up their order at home online). And by having the bad economical index, you are condamning your stores to fight against your Internet website, which is counterproductive. The Internet website of a banner is successful thanks to the job of the store network, and hence, it is important to see the big pictures, and to incentive the point of sales maybe not to the sales it does compared to N-1, but to the level of service it provided, the sales on the Internet website the region did, or something like that.

I think the last point is the most important. We are experiencing major changes in shopper behaviors, and the way retailers envision its index of performance will have an impact on the way the stores can contribute to the whole sales of the banner.

Anders Dahlvig's Vision Of Private Label And Its Example: Oxylane

Couple of months ago I finished the book of former CEO of Ikea Anders Dahlvig. My readings inspired couple of blog posts I wrote. But so far I don't think I have discussed about Anders vision about private label. Anders Dahlvig, and Ikea foremost, believe that private lable is vital for one retailer. It allows one retailer to set apart the competition. Indeed, if retailers of one sector have the very same products to distribute, then there are little room to differentiate, and hence to set apart from the competition. Then most of the time it leads to price competition,which has as the main outcome to shrink mergins.

Hence, Ikea has always worked on innovative private labeled products, that would be difficult to reproduce for the competition, and hence, can give them an edge.

I wanted to link this vision to one of the greatest success of French retailing: Decathlon. Decathlon is a sport goods retailer. The sport market is ruled by large brands, mostly Nike and Adidas, which have massive advertizing budgets of all kinds (sponsorhip, TV commercials, event organization...) to promote their brand. Therefore it is difficult in these conditions to see a private label grow. But Decathlon, which was already a large retailer in France, decided to focus on its private label, and to turn it into the core of the company. Now, Decathlon sells mostly private label goods, and has been able to innovate big time in the industry. Its tent which is set in 2 seconds is one of the best example.

Private Label is actually a very important marketing tool for one retailer, as it is the easiest way to be different from the competition.

Whereas its competitors are struggling, Decathlon is able to maintain its sells thanks to its private label, in a market known for the power of its brands. The best example I believe of all.

Leclerc: Est ce que l'objectif du 0 prospectus est il tenable?

Un petit post en français (une fois n’est pas coutume). Mais je voulais réagir à un article publié sur le blog d’Olivier Dauvers, que jesuis régulièrement. En effet, la problématique est plutôt française pour 2 raisons :

• .       La première est que Leclerc est un acteur principalement français.
• .       Le prospectus reste une typicité française (attention : tous les autres pays en ont, mais il reste pour moi tout de même une spécificité nationale.

Est-ce que Leclerc va réussir son pari ?

Personnellement je n’y crois pas.

• ·         La concurrence est exacerbée sur le marché français.
• ·         La consommation a été maintenue principalement via la promotion, et donc l’augmentation de l’agressivité des tracts.
• ·         Cela reste l’un des médias push les moins chers du marché.
• ·         Une grande partie des négociations avec les industriels restent basées sur le prospectus, et donc trouver d’autres contreparties qui permettraient de développer de la même manière l’activité semble difficile (sinon Leclerc aurait déjà significativement baissé ses investissements tracts).
• ·         Les autres médias disponibles en push (notamment l’emailing) n’arrivent pas à avoir le même impact.

Est-ce que le pari du 0 prospectus est possible ?

Non, pour 2020, néanmoins, je crois sincèrement qu’il serait possible dediviser par 2 le nombre de prospectus distribué.

• ·         Modifier la stratégie promo des distributeurs : Aux Etats-Unis, la promotion était principalement faite par des coupons papiers distribués en boîte au lettre. Depuis plusieurs années, il y a eu une très forte conversion de ces coupons vers des applications mobiles.
• ·         Travailler sur des prospectus avec moins de produits, et surtout plus regroupés, ce qui permettrait de faire baisser le nombre de pages par prospectus.
•         Une baisse du poids promo dans les enseignes, lié à la reprise de la croissance et d'une augmentation du pouvoir d'achat. Le budget prospectus reste conséquent, et si la bataille concurrentielle se réalise sur d'autres aspects, alors il sera plus facile de diminuer les envois de prospectus.

N.B. : Il faut savoir que l’édition des prospectus n’est pas forcément mauvais pour l’écologie, puisque la plupart des papiers imprimés aujourd’hui sont issus de papier recyclable, ou bien issu de forêt géré de manière durable où le papier consommé permet de financer la reforestation. 

What Strategy For Amazon With Its Small Suppliers?

Obviously, the interview of Jeff Bezos on CBS’s 60 minutes show has created a great hype. First of all, Jeff Bezos is a brilliant entrepreneur that makes very rare apparitions on TV. Secondly, its aim to use drones to deliver in an hour merchandises was obviously a great marketing coup. Indeed, I believe that legal restrictions makes the idea of seeing drones delivering packages at a large scale a real utopia.

But there was another part that was interesting: Amazon’s relationship with its small suppliers. Indeed, Amazon has become a real tycoon of cultural goods retailing. Its low cost strategy has narrowed the margins of a lot of small book editors, which are now struggling financially.

Here is apart of the discussion on this topic.

Charlie Rose: A lot of small book publishers and other smaller companies worry that the power of Amazon gives them no chance.

Jeff Bezos: You got to earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it’s disruptive to the old way.

Rose: Yeah, but I mean, there are areas where your power’s so great, and your margin — you’re prepared to make it so thin — that you can drive people out of business. And you have that kind of strength, and people worry: Is Amazon ruthless in their pursuit of market share?

Bezos: The Internet is disrupting every media industry, Charlie. You know, people can complain about that, but complaining is not a strategy. Amazon is not happening to book selling; the future is happening to book selling.

I believe that Amazon needs to have a different approach with its small suppliers. Indeed, Amazon has been able to build its success thanks to its ability to propose the widest product range possible. And small editors are there to make sure the choice remains high. Obviously, Amazon can not take the responsibility to save one supplier. But having a specific approach with its smaller editor can only be good in the long term. Indeed, I don’t believe it would be savvy for Amazon to see a massification of its suppliers, as it will imply tougher negotiations with larger corporations. The fact the book market is so open is a competitive advantage for Amazon that can benefit of its ecommerce structure to propose once again a wide range, with a lot of different actors in it. If the small firms quit, it would be easier for competitors to have a product range close to Amazon’s. And once again, the ability of Amazon to negotiate will be more difficult.

Happy New Year 2014

This post may not be the most innovative and creative of all, but I wanted to wish to all of you a happy new year 2014. 2013 has been a difficult year. Indeed, like other economic experts, I believed that 2013 would be the year that will mark the end of the crisis which started in 2008. Despite clear improvement, we can still say that the world is struggling. And I really hope that 2014 will be the year of sustainable change.

I have started couple of weeks ago a new job, and 2014 will also be for me a big change. I will discuss about that in my next blog notes.

I wish to all of you the best 2014 year possible.

Discovering the Homes-up.com Store Concept : When Showrooming Is Pushed To Its Extreme

French magazine LSA is publishing a series of articles about retailers all around the world that masters cross channel retailing (Internet – point of sales). One ofthe them got my attention: homes-up.com.

Homes-up.com is mostly an online retailer, but own a boutique in Shangai. The concept is that it is a 100% showroom store, where the different products the company sells are displayed. In order to get those products, the company have 2 computers in the middle of the store, for the shoppers to order the goods he wants. Then they will be delivered home.

LSA considers that it is a pity the store does not propose to purchase the products and hence to take them out with you. I actually don’t think so. We may have a consumption that showrooming is bad for business, and that it is important to find new ways to generate both squarefoot sales, and in store profitability.

But actually, homes-up.com is defining a totally new business model. A business model I envisioned years ago. This model has a lot of strength:

• ·         You maximize the display room, as there are no stocks.
• ·         You have very low wages costs, as you don’t cash in (either by mobile devices or the computers of the company). And same thing, you save space as there is no cashier desk.
• ·         Your salesperson can focus on advising, and can be stress free concerning the fact that the customer is going to indeed purchase the goods online.

This is a new business model that I am sure will spring up in the next couple of years.

Apple Acquires PrimeSense: How It Will Impact Microsoft

Apple hasrecently acquired Israeli startup PrimeSense for $345 millions. The name of PrimeSense may not ring your bell, as I did not know either about the company, but it is the company that was behind Microsoft’s Xbox Kinnect system.

 As a user of the Kinnect, I must admit that the product is a hit. I have always been surprise to see how advance the technology was, especially because there has not really been any mid technology in between.

Apple has made a smart move. Obviously 3D sensing technology is the future media of interactions between electronic devices and humans.  And probably they are looming on using this technology for their TV devices they have been willing to launch for the longest time.

But Apple may also have some sneaky ideas behind this move: Indeed, the Xbox system is one of the major success of Microsoft those past few years. Microsoft is still struggling to find a new OS which would allow him to get some marketshares back, they are also experiencing problems with their Windows phone, but the Xbox is rocking.

 By acquiring the company that gave Microsoft an edge over the competition, they may master the cost of the technology, and hence have an impact on the Kinnect profitability. I can’t help thinking that Apple thought about it while discussing with PrimeSense.

Tim Cook hit the headlines with his wishes, writing about some highly innovative launch. I don’t think he was speaking about a larger Ipad, but probably that this innovation will include some of PrimeSense technology.

Playstation Strategy of Stockout During Christmas

Like every other year when a new video game hardware is released for christmas time, the stores run out of stock in no time, leaving customers in cries, wondering how they could get the precious new gear.

This year is exactly the same. Both Playstation 4 and Xbox one are impossible to be found 2 weeks before Christmas celebrations.

Some will say that this is a strategy, and that suppliers are actually planifying this stockout in order to raise the demand.

Obviously, one customer eager to purchase a Playstation 4 has no intention to by any other hardware, so there are little chances the customer will turn to a competitor.

But still, is it a good thing to leave customers unsatisfied like that? Also Sony is going through a retailer to sell those, and creating stockout is something retailers hate ( customer disatisfaction, loss of sales...).

Also Sony has hence never been able to experience 100% full potential of its launch sales, and therefore it is difficult for Sony to have clear data on the level of missed sales.
Probably Sony has hard time to produce that many hardware in such a period of time but they must anticipate.

This is the reason why I don't think Playstation is making the right call, and that this stockout strategy is actually bad for the company.

Thoughts On Ecommerce: How Big Will Ecommerce Become?

I would like to write an article about an interesting article I found online about Ecommerce sales figures. According to the article, Comscore estimates Ecommerce has generated $50 billions in the US for the second quarter of 2013. That counts for 5,5% of the whole commerce sales. Even if its share in the whole commerce pie remains pretty small:

• It does not stop getting bigger.
• It counts for most of the growth of commerce.
• It still has the bigger growth potential.

Nevertheless, I still believe that Ecommerce as we know it will never be the biggest part of business. The human interface is too important to live without it 100%. 

Also, another important data of the article is the sales figures of mobile commerce: $4,7 billions. But the issue with that stats is that it probably counts the sales generated via tablets. And to me, there is a difference between buying with a mobile device outside home, and buying with a mobile device home. Hence, it is difficult to say that we see a real rise of mobile phones retailing. 

Walmart's Mobile Strategy

I wanted to discuss about an interesting post I found on Walmart's Mobile Strategy. Walmart is by far the largest retailer in the world, and obviously is a leader of opinion in terms of how to use new marketing techniques. It seems that Walmart's mobile strategy has been pretty successful.

Walmart has launched a mobile application, allowing the customer to have a shopping list, and to have information about the promotions and the products.

According to the article, the application generates sales incremental of 40%. The only thing is that we don't know if it is 40% more than prior to them using the application or 40% more than people who don't own the application. 

It changes a lot, because:

- If it is 40% more than before, that means the application really has an impact on customer behavior, proposing extra value to the shopping experience. I find that hardly possible to have such outstanding performances, especially because the application seems to be standard, with no extraordinary innovations. 

- If it is 40% more than customers without it, it maybe because people who own smartphones tend to have more money than people who don't. Also, probably people with the applications are people who are more loyal, and hence,  tend to spend more.

Nevertheless, Walmart made a right move in investing in mobile strategy, because it allows the retailer to improve its customer experience + its knowledge of customer's shopping habits.

Apple Struggling In China As Xiomi Is Overtaken The Iphone

Apple is facing a lot of competition both in the tablet and the smartphone markets. Indeed, even though Apple is the trailblazer of both devices, it is struggling to compete with its competitors especially in the emerging market. Apple has always had a luxury brand strategy, trying to set itself apart of the competition, and owning unique products. But the fact is that its competitors now manufacture devices as good as Apple's ones, at a lower price. 

Emerging market people still have lower salaries and purchasing powers than western countries, which fact does not benefit to companies with high pricing. And this is what Apple is experiencing right now. I recently learned that Apple is only ranking n°5 in the Chinese market, and has recently been overtaken by Chinese competitor Xiomi. 

Apple has reshaped its strategy lately, by launching an entry level phone, the Iphone 5c, especially in order to be competitive in terms of pricing in those countries (China, India and Brazil), how would that work? It would be interested to see how this model perform, because the world growth of the electronic devices is based in those emerging markets. Apple can not delay its efforts in these countries, because once the competition will be mature, it will be tough to gain marketshares.

Category Management Series: Supply Chain As A Key Component

It has been a while I have not fed the category management series, even though i know it has some success. Today I wanted to discuss about one of the key of category management, especially for fast moving goods categories: The supply chain.

The supply chain is a very important part of category management. Indeed, you may have set the best product range, the most attractive promotional offer, or have a massive number of customers, if your supply chain has not been integrated properly, it may lead to a disaster.

An efficient supply chain is the one which provides you with the appropriate number of products, at the appropriate time. Problems with supply chain lead to stockout, which is one of the main cause of unsatisfied customers. Customers expect you to own the products of your product range, and it is one of the basis of one retailer's trade.

The supply chain therefore should always been integrated to the category management process right from the beginning and followed through. Indeed, a problem with the supply chain management may explain under performance for example of a promotion, if the product has not been available right from the beginning of the communication.

A strong supply chain also implies good interractions between the retailer and the supplier in order to minimize the issues that may appear once a category management program has been set.

In the Category Management Series:

Category management series: The Pricing

Category management series: Category Management & CRM

Category management series: The First Moment of Truth

My Thoughts On Twitter's IPO

Twitter's IPO yesterday was a remarkable success. The stock has spiked by 73% for its first day of quotatation. There were a lot of questions about how Twitter would do for its first day at the stock exchange market, due to the fact that the company has not achieved yet any profitable years. I wanted to comment a little bit about that news.

I think Twitter's stock is overrated

Of course, we are far from the 2000s Internet buble, investors know how to forecast better the return on investment of such Internet companies. Nevertheless, I may be old fashion about it, but without a consistent business modell, it is difficult to evaluate the worth of a company. Having a company worth $21 billions which is about what a company like Carrefour is worth, which sales for over $130 billion and generates hundreds of millions in results, it is difficult to understand. Obviously Twitter has a large potential of growth, but still, they need to show evidences that they can achieve such a worth.

Twitter's stock spike is understandable

Investors understand that tech companies are in the future the most profitable companies, and the companies that will grow the most. Therefore, in this crisis, having such an opportunity to invest on one of the largest Internet company (in terms of users) is a great opportunity, which is worth to be over paying at the moment. This is the reason why I believe the company had experienced such a great success.

Twitter's stock price is a threat to Twitter

The higher the price, the higher the expectations. Twitter now must be able to deliver proper financial results in order to generate profits to distributes to its shareholder. Has Twitter's business modell evolved dramatically those past few months to achieve profitability? In my opinion the answer is no. Now Twitter has financial results to invest, but they need to accelerate their sales and revenues. 

Twitter will remain in the long term.

Despite the fact I am still questionning Twitter on its business model, and I don't see yet how the company would generate profits in the next 2-3 years, I believe Twitter will remain. The service has changed the life of millions of people, the idea is great, and the service work. I don't believe that people can now live without Twitter. I also believe that Twitter has achieved to get such a high number of users that no real competition would be able to do so. Now the question is how Twitter will evolve. It will be interesting to see, but now that Twitter is a public market company things will move fast.

8 Habits of Highly Effective People

A quick note about a great article I found thanks to @guikawasaki. I am always seeking for new ways to improve my professionnal efficiency, and I believe this article and these 8 tips are easy to set up, and work. I have just completed them with a little bit of my insights.

1- Stop multi tasking: 

One man brain works like a computer (actually, it is more computers that have been designed like a human brain, but for my example let's turn it around): the more you have software open at the same time, the slower your computer will be. Be like an Ipad: Apple decided right from the beginning to have only one application at a time, to secure fast running processes.

2 - Delegate:

You can't do it all by yourself, whatever your hierarchy postion may be. You need to trust people and find way to control what they are doing. If not, you are screwed. You don't need to have a team under you to delegate. Sometimes I even delegate to my boss some work that I consider he would do better than me, due to his skills and/or hierarchy position.

3 - Use appropriate communication

This one probably requires a lot of experience. It is through experience that you know how to communicate efficiently. It is important always to work on it.

4 - Apply structure to your schedule

It is important to have an organized schedule, but also a schedule where you plan ahead of time some open loops in order to gain flexibility. Because there are always unexpected things, you need to plan ways to deal with them.

5 - Give everything a proper place

This one I may disagree a little bit. Indeed, you save time when you know where things are. But by spending too much time to range everything, then you don't focus on the things that really creates value. 

6 - Time Activities

You need to know the approximate time of certain tasks in order to master your schedule. You need also to be able to seek for ways to cut the time you spend on certain activities. This is how you complete efficiency.

7 - Commit to Downtime

Need to work on that. I used to go swimming every day at my lunch break, but got hooked by my work. Need to get back on my routine. Nevertheless, I am able to see the time of the year where work gets crazy, in order to lower my work load during weaker times.

8 - Plan Projects

What really matter is to break down projects in easilly achievable goals, which lead to progress. Project planning needs to have a clear mind, in order to think through all the potential outcomes of one project.

The Important Skills For Analytics

A quick note that have been inspired by a tweet of @kelloggschool about the most important skill in data analytics. 

"What very few people understand is that the most important skills in analytics are not technical skills at all. They're actually thinking skills".

I am 100% agree with this statement. Indeed, I believe that what really matters once analyzing data is the ability to understand the origins of the data, and to translate it into simple and operational decisions.

I always take a lot of times to understand the history, the origins of the data: Why did the sale falls? Was the previous data too high, hyped du to extrordinary events? Or because something went wrong in store? A shut down of the web page? Data alone, even if pure, well brought, and the proper one, does not mean much. It is therefore always important to correlate it to actual concrete stuffs.

And then, what is interesting, it is always to make decisions on it. Being able from complex data to bring a clear view of what needs to be undertaken to maintain good figures or to turn around one situation.

I am currently reading the book of former TESCO's CEO Terry Leahy in his book "Management in 10 Words". One of them is "simplicity". During this chapter, he emphasizes on the difficulty of making simple decisions to solve complex problems. Nowadays, with the Big Data, the information overload, most of things seems to be complexed, and most of the time, we tend to look for complex solutions to these complex problems. One of the key factore of success of management is to simplify decisions, in order to have them well applied by the staff. 

Same things with analytics, it is not because you have complex analytics that you should have complex reports, and complex actions linked to them.

Articles About Customers' Behavior During Sales Periods

Sales season, or promotional campaigns are a very important part of your marketing strategy. In terms of customer relationship management, actually, we use a lot of techniques in order to have targeted ads with targeted discounts in order to optimize promotional budgets. But when it comes to sales, you are in a totally different area, as you have massive discounts for any people who gets in your store. Nevertheless, as most of retails own a substential part of its sales made during those kind of periods, these events should be taken into account in your customer relationship management strategy.

French Magazine Challenges has interviewed French expert in economical behaviors Mickaël Mangot about how customer's behavior may change during sales periods.

Customers behavior during these sales are based on two platforms:

• Rarity: The stock avaible + the high level of discount + the short period of time, drive the urge to get the products. We desire things more when they are rare.
• Social competition: During the sales period, brand products are affordable to most people which creates the will to go up the social scale. We want to get as much products to own more things than our peers.

There are two main tactics used by retailers to succeed during these sales.

• Showing off the original labelled price: The customer tends to pay more attention to the discount level than the actual price after the discount. By maximizing and showing the discount, retailers raise its chances of selling.
• Advertizing big discounts in order to attract customers into its stores, and then having lower discounts inside store. The big discounted products are available with low stocks. If the customer don't find what it needs, it will have a high probability to buy another product with a lower discount.

There are two important kinds of utility for a customer during sales hunt:

• The utility of the experience: What utility you get from the things you buy.
• The transaction: Most of the time, this experience is the one with the most emphasize during sales. 
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Sales are a very important part of a relationship between a retailer and a customer, and you should pay attention to the experience you provide to your customers during this period.

Leshop: The Most Successful Grocery E-Retailer In The World

I wanted to writte an article about a company I already wrote about, which is a great success on line, Swiss company Le Shop.  In the booming e-commerce, most companies which experience great success sell either cultural goods that can be easilly dematerialize, or companies that sell hardware and electronics. 

But in the world, it is very rare to see food retailers being able to run a profitable business. A lot of companies are looming on the potential, such as Amazon, but even though the business is not that old, some companies have already filed for bankrupcy, like French e-retailer telemarket.fr. 

The calcul is simple: If on average e-commerce can counts in the end for about 30% of the overall commerce, the growth margin is very high, as I don't know any countries where grocery e-retailing has a market share higher than 10%.

Le Shop is one of them. Founded in 1997, the company struggled in its debut, but was able to go through the Internet bubble of the early 2000s. In 2003, the company set a strategic partnership with Swiss leading company Migros, which allowed them to get the buying terms and the private label catalog. 

In 2013 the company:

• Generates 31% of its sales on smartphones and tablets
• Sales for 122 M€
• Counts for 0,8% of market shares.
• Is profitable.

Of course, the Swiss market may not be the most aggressive in terms of pricing, but Le Shop, thanks to its trailblazer mindset, has been able to develop a good business. Also, Switzerland is probably a great country, as the equipment in smartphones and tablets is probably higher than the world average. There are though probably a lot to learn for competitors in order to launch their business online.

La dématérialisation des programmes de fidélité

Je souhaitais relayé un excellent article que j'ai lu sur le magasin professionnel LSA du 26 septembre au sujet des programmes de fidélité dématérialisés. En effet, les smartphones et les nouvelles technologies ont énormément fait bouger les programmes de fidélité, aussi bien d'un point de vue du support, mais aussi des mécaniques commerciales. Vertone IAE et Comscore font un état de la fidélisation en France en 2013:

• 58% des français ont entre 3 et 10 cartes de fidélité.
• 66% : taux de pénétration des programmes de fidélité en grande surface alimentaire.
• 50% des acteurs de la distribution alimentaire et 30% des acteurs de la distribution non alimentaire ont dématérialisé leur carte de fidélité sur mobile. A savoir (pour être dans le milieu) que cette dématérialisation qui semble très simple pour le consommateur, est en fait très compliqué car souvent, les caisses de ces distributeurs ne sont pas faites technologiquement pour lire des codes barres sur des écrans de portable. Mais les nouvelles caisses maintenant les prennent en compte.
• +100% de programmes fidélité téléchargés en 2013. 27% des possesseurs de smartphones, soit 15 % de la population totale ont leurs programmes de fidélité sur portable vs 7% en 2012.

Il existe 4 grands types d'applications portable relayant les programmes de fidélité:

• Les portes cartes, permettant l'accès facile et rapide au 3 à 10 cartes que le clients possèdent, et donc d'augmenter les chances que le consommateur utilise celui-ci.
• La ludification: Proposer des récompenses liées à l'utilisation de l'application. Cela peut être en scannant des produits sur le point de vente, en faisant des commentaires et donc en interagissant avec l'enseigne, ou encore en "likant" la marque.
• Le service omnicanal: Il permet de pouvoir proposer du service et du conseil à valeur ajoutée au consommateur, ce qui est très bénéfique sur des produits à forte customization, tel que les produits cosmetiques ou techniques.
• Les porte monnaies: Une utilisation simple, qui permet d'avoir accès à des réductions. 

Il est très souvent difficile d'avoir une seule application qui regroupent l'intégralité de ces services. D'ailleurs, je pense qu'il y a certainement pas mal de place pour des entreprises qui souhaiteraient regrouper pour plusieurs enseignes un même service, type commentaires consommateurs, ou bien un porte monnaie électronique multi enseignes et multi produits.

Il y a encore pas mal de chemin à faire pour les applications mobiles dans le cadre de la fidélisation, car pour l'instant on reste sur une utilisation historique de programmes déjà établit, et très peu de nouveaux concepts de fidélisation ont émergé de ces nouvelles technologies. Je me souviens à un moment de Franprix qui avait fait des expérimentations d'un programme de fidélisation 100% mobile il y a déjà 4 ans, mais qui manifestement n'a pas vraiment marché.

Il y a un point dans la ludification qui pour mois a aussi un très grand avenir et un très grand intérêt pour les distributeurs, c'est pour les applications de géolocalisation, type foursquare. J'espère que Foursquare sera capable de passer un niveau, et de devenir un réel "annuaire mobile de géolocalisation", car cela sera un outil parfait pour les enseignes de générer du traffic en magasin.

Concours vidéo du Cercle du Marketing Direct

Une deuxième publicité au sujet de ma lecture récente du blog de mon ami Henri Kaufman. En effet, en plus d'avoir été directeur d'agence de communication, auteur du livre sur la Créativité, il est aussi actuellement le co-président du Cercle du Marketing Direct, l'une des instances les plus connues au sujet du marketing ciblé. 

Le Cercle du marketing direct vient de lancer un grand concours vidéo pour les jeunes professionnels de moins de 30 ans, afin qu'ils réalisent une vidéo de moins de 30 secondes avec pour objectif de nous montrer leurs vision du commerce dans 30 ans.

J'invite toute personne intéressée de s'inscrire, en vous souhaitant bonne chance.

La Créative Attitude par Henri Kaufman, éditions Kawa

Je souhaitais faire un peu de publicité (en français, une fois n'est pas coutume) pour la parution du nouveau livre d'Henri Kaufman sur "La Créative Attitude". 

Henri Kaufman est l'une des personnes les plus brillantes que je connaisse. Je l'ai rencontré lors de mes études à Paris Dauphine, il était alors mon professeur, et m'a éclairé à l'utilisation des réseaux sociaux, et notamment du blog. Je pense que sans lui, je n'aurai jamais réussi à développer autant ce blog, car il m'a permis de bien prendre conscience de tout le potentiel de l'outil (il y a près de 5 ans déjà). Henri fut directeur d'agence de communication, et est un spécialiste du marketing direct, et bien sûr du marketing digital. 

Extrèmement créatif, il a décidé de partager ses recettes miracles dans ce nouveau livre, afin d'aider ceux qui se considèrent non créatif, ou bien ceux qui ont du mal à trouver des idées, à développer les aptitudes et environnements qui vont favoriser l'émergence de ces idées. 

Je souhaite un grand succès à ce livre, en espérant qu'il vous aidera à trouver de nouvelles idées, mais surtout à les appliquer.

Is There A Future For Electronic Goods Retailing? Some Of My Thoughts

I recently read an article about the good health of Best Buy's Stocks. Surprisingly, even though the competition with online retailer becomes tougher and tougher, Best Buy succeded in delivering promising results. The question that this article ask, and the same that I ask to @tbayart , was if brick and mortard electronic goods retailer still have a future. 

Indeed, in this specific field, the competition of the Internet is very important. Most of the traditional store chains are not able to compete with prices, and the showrooming hype makes it even worse. The margin rates are historically low, and the price competition with online retailers which don't have the real estate cost makes it even tougher!

Some people even believe that traditionnal retailers are condamned to shut down eventually. Actually, I do not really agree with this version.

I may look like a trailblazer, but I have envision what is going on right now almost ten years ago: the show rooming trend. But at this time, I did not picture it as a bad thing, but actually a great opportunity to improve customer relationship, and the added value of the retailer. Here is sort of what I saw:

• Stores would have very low stocks as people would tend more to buy goods to be delivered home.
• There would be no cash desks, people would buy with cards and have automatic cash desks, which would lower the cost of cashing in.
• There would be fewer products, to simplify customers' choices, but they would be presented in a manner that customers would be able to test them.

Of course, my vision now would have changed a little bit. Because the world has evolved a lot (at this time I could not see how mobile devices would change the world, nor what the competition landscape would have been), and also because I gained experience and expertise about retailing and marketing.

But I still believe there is a lot of room for brick & mortar retailers. And the main reason is that those kind of products requires a long decision making process, a high implication due to the cost, and a great knowledge of the products due to their complexities.

So I still believe there is room to develop a profitable business modell, which would actually be based on the showrooming trend which most of experts blame.

• Maybe there would be less stores, and further from downtown: Maybe like Ikea with a big surface, which would help to show out the products.
• Maybe there would be no stocks, or actually like ikea, on the opposite, there would be no warehouses the stocks being in the store.
• People would buy on their sell phone their products, which would lower the cash desk cost.
• Maybe there would be lower inventory (I believe that the market becoming mature, the product ranges start to be cut, which is a good thing), which will lower the cost of inventory.

I may not have all the information needed to develop the whole concept, but trust me, there is room.

Apple's Low Cost Strategy To Enter Emerging Markets

Apple launched yesterday its new Iphone range, composed by 2 devices: One enhanced version, with a better processor, and new features, and one low cost, which is sort of the same than the previous version.

I believe there are two goals in the fact that Apple launch a low cost device:

1. Being able to compete on the second hand market: Apple can propose an old version new at a good price. Now that the smartphone markets become mature, the second hand market starts to count in the overal smartphone market, therefore there is room for growth on it. This is what Renault made in the car market by launching the low cost brand Dacia, with a certain success.
2. Being able to compete in the emerging markets, where smartphone prices tends to be lower. This is the reason why its competitors excell, and take some market shares to Apple.

This is the second point I would like to discuss. Indeed, emering markets are very important for global companies as it is where growth is. The goal in this market is to set a presence that will secure a big market share, if possible a leading position, in order to generate long term profitability once the market matures.

But Apple have a dilemma: Indeed, even though they are not a luxury brand, they have a luxury branding strategy. And by trying to have an accessible price, they may alter this strategy. I believe they must have struggled with this move. And probably this is the reason why they have picked a targeted price of 500$ which is actually very close to the standard price of 600$.

But Apple must be able to get competitive in terms of pricing in order to generate new customers. Because if they don't they may not be able to compete soon with the other manufacturers like Samsung.

What do you think about it?