Ten years after leaving Greece, Carrefour makes a new attempt to get a foothold in the Hellenic Republic through a local franchise partner.
Old acquaintance
Carrefour starts a partnership with Retail & More, a subsidiary of technology distributor TeleUnicom, to relaunch its brand in Greece. Before the summer, the first stores should open their doors, more specifically on the island of Crete. The franchise partner will focus on supermarkets and convenience stores and is not planning to open any hypermarkets.
For the operations, the retailer relies on an old acquaintance: Vassilis Stasinoulias, who was top manager of the Carrefour-Marinopoulos joint venture between 2008 and 2011. Carrefour had been active in Greece before, but decided to leave the country in 2012 due to the debt crisis.
“We decided to create a new food retail business unit because there was a high demand for Carrefour in Greece”, Stasinoulias explains. “Carrefour’s brand and products are well known to Greek customers”, confirms Patrick Lasfargues, who is in charge of international partnerships at Carrefour. “TeleUnicom offers us the best platform to enter this market quickly and efficiently.”
