[Interview] Why Action wants to be “like Mondo Duplantis”

With a surprising ‘unboxing’ every day, the life of a manager at Action is anything but boring. The discounter wants to dispel more preconceptions: “You see all types of cars in our car parks.”

“Be like Mondo Duplantis”

Action’s impressive growth in Europe has been astonishing and admired by retail observers for years. The secret of the non-food discount chain can be summed up in a simple formula for success, Country Director Bart Raeymaekers says: “Action = price x surprise x people” – and all this topped off with a dash of sustainability.

“Every euro you do not spend as a retailer, is one you do not have to ask your customer for. So look for efficiency. Constantly question yourself and always strive for better. Be like an athlete: you need to have the mindset of someone like pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, who just broke his world record again. We develop strong processes, roll them out to all countries and continuously improve them. There are no coincidences at Action.”

Smart shopping

An important success factor is the surprising range: every week, 150 new items hit the shelves. This is not only attractive to customers, but also to store managers, who do not know in advance what will be delivered. “If you are a store manager at Action, you get to unbox a surprise every day! How cool is that? We also have an internal email address where employees can send suggestions for items they like to inspire our buyers.”

“The profile of our customers is also surprising”, says Raeymaekers, who has witnessed its growth from less than 300 to more than 3,000 stores from the front row. “The preconception is that many of our customers come from lower social classes and that they shop with us out of necessity, but that is not the case. Just under a third of our customers are in the higher income bracket, a little less than a third are middle class and only slightly more than a third are in the lower income bracket. You see all types of cars in the Action car park: it is just smart shopping.”

“At least one career advancement per store”

You can have the best retail concept, but people make the difference. “We select our employees very carefully, based on their values and standards. We first look at who you are, then at what you can do. We invest heavily in internal training: our goal is to have at least one internal career advancement per store. Our store managers are given real responsibility: we do not have shelf plans; they decide on the gondola heads themselves, as well as on orders. We only have one KPI: the total turnover of the store.”

The high level of commitment among employees is evident from the biannual satisfaction survey “The Voice of Action”, which has an unprecedented participation rate of over 90 %. Raeymaekers’ career is a good illustration of the opportunities offered by the retailer: he started as an area manager at Action in April 2012, when Belgium had only 35 stores. He then went on to manage the chain in France and Germany. Today, he is responsible for Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy as one of the company’s three regional country directors, as Action has now split Europe into three parts.

2 for the price of 1

At RetailDetail’s Retail Marketing Day on 25 September in Antwerp, Bart Raeymaekers from Action will debunk more preconceptions about discounters. Other discounters, such as Takko Fashion and Primark, will also explain their strategies. Tickets can be reserved via the link below. Until 24 August, you can get two tickets for the price of one!