It was a surprising announcement that Francesco Pugliese, managing director of the Italian retail group Conad, made that on the 19th February 2015, the day of the Chinese New Year, five new stores under the Conad brand will open in Shanghai and in the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, with an assortment of 250 Sapori&Dintorni Conad and Conad products, including fresh and dry goods, frozen foods and wine. However, it isn’t only “traditional” business: vending machines stocked with a wide range of Conad products are to be activated from which Chinese consumers can do their home shopping and get it delivered to their door within 24 hours of ordering. In the next phase of these automatic distributors it is planned that another 200 of them will be installed, in other strategic locations around the city. The management of these five sales points has been entrusted to a company part owned by a local businessman and part by a state company active in the transport. The initiative is set to reinforce the 60 million Euros of profit developed by Conad throughout the course of 2014.
Conad’s 2014 turnover closed with a 1.5% increase, which secures the 3% growth objective for 2015 and to much surprise it has also announced its entrance to the Chinese market. The year’s turnover amounted to 11.73 billion Euros, 173 million more than in 2013, a result obtained by the redevelopment of the sales network and a strategic development also implemented for external lines (with acquisitions of sales outlets Billa, Despar and Eurospar). The network has now grown to 351 sales outlets, 89 of which are new outlets whilst the others are restructurings of brand changes. The total investment amount was 350 million Euros and it created 1,890 jobs, bringing the total to 48,604. In total the sales network is growing by 33,818 square metres, although it has decreased by 12 units with respect to 2013 due to the reorganisation: there are 3,007 sales outlets (37 Conad Ipermercato, 192 Conad Superstore, 1,003 Conad, 970 Conad City, 560 Margherita Conad, 180 Todis and 65 others) with a floor space of 1,784,461 square metres. Productivity is at 6,160 Euros per square metre, although regarding the size of the average sales outlet (600 square metres) it is smaller with respect to other modern distribution chains. The points of excellence are the Sapori&Dintorni stores which reach 21 million Euros per square metre. This year the market share has climbed to 11.4% and Conad highlights having leadership in the supermarket sector, with 18.6% (+0.4 percentage points with respect to 2013) and the local sales outlets with 14.3% (source: Guida Nielsen Largo Consumo).