CONTEXT
After almost two years of Covid-19, the importance of stores as part of unified retail is accepted. However, independent retailers in the food and non-food sectors, which make up a significant share of the retail market globally, are lagging behind. For these firms, an equitable sharing of value between management of the network and independent store owners gains in importance on various aspects. These include sharing customer data, rewarding stores for digital sales and efficiently promoting the business. More generally, how to merge independent retailers (franchisees, associates of cooperatives…) into a unified commerce, with a fair margin distribution. One answer is to allocate resources as efficiently as possible and accelerate business performance.
PANORAMA
For some years, management at retail headquarters considered e-commerce as an Eldorado, as a closed shop without external shares. Online sales accounted for “the turnover of one or two large stores”, as was said recently. However, following Covid-19, retailers realised they have more to gain by reliance on physical stores. “For the last two or three years, we have seen a better sharing of value”, observes Julien Siouffi, franchise expert at Axe Réseau. “We see less and less retailers operating online sales by themselves. They understand online sales figures were much higher when stores are integrated”. The only remaining exceptions are companies where there are more fully-owned stores than franchisees. Today, retailers such as John Lewis (UK, 75% of online sales by 2021) or Yves Rocher (France) are perfectly aware of the additional turnover generated in their stores when Web orders are collected.