Carrefour

The Carrefour S. A. is an international French company at retail. It is the largest retail companies in Europe and after Wal -Mart is the second largest in the world. Other significant competitors of Carrefour, Metro AG and Tesco.

The end of 2007, the Company operated 14,991 stores in numerous countries and employed 456,000 people. Sales amounted to 78.46 billion euros in 2012. France and Spain are the most important countries in Carrefour, together they are responsible for over 50 % of sales.

History

Carrefour was founded in 1959 by Marcel Fournier, together with Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey. In 1963, Carrefour developed the concept of hypermarkets. The company expanded in 1969 to Belgium, in 1973 and 1975 to Spain to Brazil. 1976 took advantage of the opening of the Carrefour Shopping City Süd expansion into Austria, but remained there, after initial successes, with its sales numbers behind his expectations, and ended its involvement in Austria. An expansion attempt by Germany (Mainz) in 1977 failed as well, despite the generally Francophile attitude of the population of Mainz.

Since 1970, Carrefour has been listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. 1997 123.400 people were employed in France alone. Sales amounted to 169 269 million francs in the same year. In 1999 merged Carrefour and Promodès.

In 2008, the company moved from the Swiss market back, due to not reach internal goal " Carrefour is only present where [they] are the number one or two. " Swiss branches were sold against payment of 470 million francs to Coop.

In China, the Beijing Olympics in 2008 was called at short notice for a boycott of the chain in advance. In connection with protests for Tibetan independence rumors had sprung up on the Internet, Carrefour would support this. Although a company press release said no, Carrefour was for a time no longer be found in many major search engine in China.

Brands

The following trademarks and brands are the Carrefour Group:

8 à Huit: 800 smaller fresh market stores in France with 70 to 400 square meters size with numerous finished products.
Carrefour: 730 very large supermarkets ( hypermarket ) with an area of up to 20,000 square meters and up to 70,000 items in the range.
Carrefour Express: Supermarkets in Poland and Turkey ( merger of Champion, Gima and Endi ).
Champion: Over 1,000 supermarkets with approximately 1,500 square meters in France, Belgium, Spain, Romania, Poland, Greece, Tunisia, Argentina and Brazil.
Dia: 3,700 hard discount stores with about 500-770 square meters of sales area in Spain, Portugal (under the name Minipreco ), Greece, Argentina, Turkey and Brazil. Offers up to 2,000 articles. Some stores are operated by franchisees.
Diperdi: Supermarkets in Italy
Ed: Harddiscounting 459 stores with 300 to 1000 square meters in France.
GB: 271 supermarkets in Belgium
GS: 371 supermarkets in Italy.
Norte: 141 supermarkets in Argentina.
ProDirect: Delivery for catering.
Promocash: 130 cash & carry markets for dealers and gastronomy in France.
Proxi: 1,310 very small supermarkets with 80 to 200 square meters.
Shopi: 600 smaller supermarkets in France with an area of 400 to 900 square meters. Offers up to 6,500 products, 3,500 fresh produce and 1,000 own-brand products.

Essentially, there are the following store types:

Hypermarché: Very large supermarkets ( hypermarkets ) claims between 5,000 and 23,000 square meters retail space and up to 70,000 items.
Supermarkets: supermarkets with 1,000 to 2,000 square meters of retail space.
Hard discounters: Smaller businesses with 200 to 800 square meters of retail space, offering basic goods for daily needs at reasonable prices.

Countries

The company operates in the following countries own branches:

Albania, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Dominican Republic, France, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Qatar, Colombia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Morocco, Macedonia, Oman, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Cyprus.

From the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Carrefour has withdrawn and the Tesco in exchange for Taiwan überlassen.PDF at www.carrefour.com

From Switzerland Carrefour has withdrawn on 21 August 2007. Coop has taken over the sites.

Carrefour sold 2005, all Mexican branches and thus withdrew from Mexico. The supermarkets in Thailand were sold in November 2010 to BIG C and renamed in April 2011 in BIG C. Both supermarkets in Singapore were in 2012 geschlossen.Reuters

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