Sophie Baqué

Latest articles by Sophie Baqué

Lise Charmel : “Any cyber risk is even greater today because there is no longer full insurance cover”

Lingerie retailer Lise Charmel, highly active in Russia and Eastern Europe, reported a massive cyberattack two years ago. For the company, whose annual turnover reached €60 million in 2018 as the...

18 February 2022

Watsons opens website and a first store in Qatar

Hong Kong-based cosmetics retailer Watsons is making inroads in Qatar with a website and a first store located in Doha Festival City. With a 300 sqm sales area, it offers 200 brands of beauty...

7 February 2022

George Yates, Back Market : “In 16 markets, our main challenge is to ensure that supply keeps pace with demand”

Only six months after previous fundraising, the second-hand marketplace Back Market (specialising in electrical products), raised €450 million and reached a valuation of €5.1 billion. George...

31 January 2022

Wang Ning, Chinese toy specialist, lands in London with Pop Mart

Aged 35, Mr. Wang Ning made his fortune with an improbable bet: selling toys (figurines and dolls) in surprise bags. In 2020, his company Pop Mart recorded a turnover of US$382 million, up by 49%...

27 January 2022

Good Food Holdings. “We are in the early stages of selecting dark stores”

In the U.S.A., supermarket chain Good Food Holdings operates 51 stores. According to C.E.O. Neil Stern, inflation, staff shortage and higher wages encourage retailers to automate operations.

26 January 2022

Patrick Raffort, FG2A : “There is a true complementarity between insurance and retail”

Patrick Raffort, President of the FG2A* is also Head of Insurance at Orange. He explains how insurance products have become a new frontier for many retail companies.

13 January 2022

Leroy Merlin Romania. “We will open a marketplace in 2023”

Over 10 years, Leroy Merlin Romania moved from a low-price retail concept to an omnichannel company in which e-commerce plays a major role, both in terms of activity and profitability. What are...

23 December 2021

Walgreens plans to sell Boots

In order to focus on its new healthcare provider business and the North American market, Walgreens Boots Alliance (sales of US$132.5 billion in the year to August 2021, +7.5%) is considering...

21 December 2021

Arnaud Le Gall, Cofidis : “The rise of split payments will accelerate in stores”

During the Covid-19 lockdowns, consumers have adopted Buy Now Pay Later payments, purchasing shoes and smartphones online in installments, directly with their cards. With sales reaching €6 billion...

3 December 2021

E-commerce. Auchan Russia wants to weigh in the balance

Russia is a challenging market for Auchan Retail and its new C.E.O. The challenge? To multiply by 4 the e-commerce turnover by 2023, an ambitious objective...

26 November 2021

U.S. investor supports Ahold Delhaize’s IPO plans

Will all offline retailers decide to list e-commerce subsidiaries on the stock exchange? How high will valuations be? With the expected IPO of Bol.com in the Netherlands, these companies have a...

19 November 2021

Migros wants “click & collect” in autonomous mode

After investing in the delivery start-up Smood (delivery in less than an hour), the Swiss cooperative Migros (turnover of about €25 billion last year) is rolling out click & collect...

2 November 2021

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E-retail media solidifies brand–retailer relationships

According to Publicis Commerce‘s e-retail media barometer for 2025 (surveying around 200 marketing, commerce, and e-commerce decision-makers in France) published on January 7, 2026, nearly...

2 February 2026

Marketplaces: Stockly enters Switzerland with MediaMarkt, Decathlon, Galaxus and Manor

After a loss-making but high-growth year in 2025, the stock-pooling start-up for marketplaces signed agreements with 4 Swiss retailers, mind Retail learned. By taking on one of Europe’s most...

30 January 2026

Retail tech: major trends for 2026

In 2026, retail can no longer afford to promise. It must deliver. Retail tech has entered the execution stage. The race for showcase innovation is over, giving way to clear priorities: operational...

30 January 2026

Bonus textile repair: a virtuous scheme held back by a shortage of skills

Two years after a launch in the fashion sector, the French repair "bonus" is struggling to scale up. The main reason is a limited pool of repairers constrained by poor recruitment. We share an...

29 January 2026

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Shoptimus AI scales up in grocery smart shopping lists and prepares for a new funding round

After securing a strategic partnership with Spanish grocer Bon Preu, retail tech firm Shoptimus AI—first spotted by Carrefour—is accelerating a rollout. By leveraging AI agents to automate grocery...

11 January 2026

With Walmart, Ulta Beauty, Zalando and Carrefour, Google launches an agentic commerce protocol

Following the launch of payments in Copilot, Google is preparing to join OpenAI and Microsoft, but with a more integrated version focused on its own payment method, Google Pay. These moves...

13 January 2026

Circana: French e-commerce ended 2025 with strong growth, hypermarkets continue to decline

After four years of decline, volumes of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) rose again in 2025 in France and Europe, although they did not compensate for four years of losses. The rebound was...

15 January 2026

2026 Trends – Chatbots, WhatsApp, social networks: don’t miss out on conversation

(Trends 2/6) After a cautious observation phase by retailers and some high-profile hallucination issues, 2025 was a turning point operationally for chatbots and conversational tools. Positioned...

13 January 2026

2026 Trends – How far should retailers open the door to AI Search engines ?

(Trends 1/6) With data visibility, recommendations, transactions on ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, LLMs are establishing themselves as new entry points for e-commerce. As search, comparison and...

8 January 2026

Black Friday: Amazon’s AI assistant Rufus featured in 38% of sessions in the US

While peak season sales, revealed at the NRF Big Show, rose by 4.1% in the US from November 1 to December 31, 2025, Rufus, Amazon’s conversational chatbot, confirmed its traction. During the...

15 January 2026