CarrefourSA aims to open 300 new stores this year

ISTANBUL

CarrefourSA, one of Turkey’s largest retailers, plans to add 300 new outlets to its vast network of supermarkets this year.

“Some 250 of the stores will open under the franchising system. In 2022, already 80 such stores were launched by March,” said Kutay Kartallığoğlu, the general manager of CarrefourSA.

He added that the retailer emerged stronger thanks to the policies designed to weather the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years.

“On the e-commerce side, turnover grew 130 percent, and the number of orders increased 151 percent compared to 2020. Total revenues of CarrefourSA amounted to 9.4 billion Turkish Liras,” Kartallıoğlu said, adding that the retailer serves around 140 million customers each year and in the first quarter of 2020, the number of customers grew 17 percent from a year ago.

“Studies show that brick-and-mortar retailing will not disappear, and with the addition of e-commerce, the industry will move to the multi-channel system. We forecast that the share of online sales may increase to 30 to 40 percent of our total sales in the short term. Some 8 million shoppers use our e-commerce platform; we deliver 400,000 to 500,000 orders each month,” he said.

The executive also pointed out strong consumer demand for the company’s private labels.

CarrefourSA presently offers 600 private levels. “They account for 15 percent of the products sold. We aim to bring this figure up to 25 to 30 percent.”

The retailer also sets out export targets for the first time this year. “I paid a visit to Italy last week. We are working to export goods to several counties, including France, Italy, Mongolia, Georgia and Israel. We have already started to send trucks to Poland,” Kartallıoğlu said, noting that CarrefourSA buys 200 million euros worth of products from suppliers in Turkey each year.