Metro Accelerates Digital Pformation And Begins To "Win Over" Innovative Technology Enterprises

It has a yellow blue signboard and a warehouse like structure similar to that of Sweden's IKEA. Metro has a pure German lineage, but also has an international standard through its business in 30 countries and regions all over the world.

In 1996, Metro's cash and carry shopping mall landed in China and was once popular among Chinese consumers in East China.

This is related to its new business philosophy, including membership wholesale, spot purchase, self purchase (cash purchase, self shipping) and so on.

For a time, Metro was second only to the United States.

Carrefour, France's third largest retail group in the world, is also one of the German blue chip index DAX constituent stocks.

However, in the fierce global competition, especially in the competition of trade and retail industry in the Internet era, Metro fell into the wind.

In 2012, Metro was kicked out of the DAX30 club because its market value was not up to standard.

According to DDT's report released in 2014, WAL-MART is sitting on the throne of the world's largest retail group by sales, followed by Costco and Carrefour, while Metro has fallen to seventh of the world, even after Schwarz Group.

In the 2014/2015 fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, Metro Group sales fell 59 billion 219 million euros, down 1.2% compared to the same period last year, and the core cash and carry business sales decreased by 2.7%.

Shrunk by more than 9%.

Obviously, the economic sanctions between Russia and Europe hurt Metro very much.

Faced with a series of severe challenges such as geopolitical risks, changes in consumption habits, and electricity supplier competition, the old German retail industry is stepping up its pformation.

In the 2014/2015 fiscal year, Metro Group sold its chain store GALERIA, withdrew from the Danish and Greek markets and began to withdraw from the Vietnamese market.

At the same time, group net debt fell by nearly 50% to 2 billion 500 million euros, thus creating room for new investment.

Starting from "laying down" and adapting to the needs of consumers, Metro's home shopping service increased from 13.7% to 3 billion 100 million euros in 2014/2015 fiscal year, accounting for 10.6% of the total sales volume of the current self purchase business. There is still room for further improvement in the future.

At the same time, Metro Group's chain store SATURN and MediaMarkt expand online sales, and 2014/2015 sales grew by more than 20% in the fiscal year, reaching 1 billion 800 million euros.

Olaf Koch, chairman of Metro Group Management Committee, pointed out that digital innovation is one of the core strategies Metro Group is implementing.

Metro and Techstars, the US business incubator, launched the enterprise accelerator project to find and support start-ups that provide digital innovation technology for hotel catering and food retail businesses.

Looking forward to 2016, although Koch does not want to disclose the next step of Metro and Alibaba cooperation plan, it is certain that compared with the new stores in China, Metro's new action on the electronic business platform is more worthy of expectation.

Through "draw in"

Metro is trying to make up for its short technology in the Internet age and create a new digital catering and food supply.

In August 2015, Metro acquired CFF, an Asian food supplier in Singapore, taking an important step towards the supply of high-end food.

CFF customers are mainly high-end hotels, restaurants, airlines in Asia.

Peter Bonnet, a board member of Metro Group, who is responsible for the spot purchase and self service business, said that in 2015, "double eleven", Metro sold 1 million 800 thousand liters of German milk on Alibaba's e-commerce platform. This is a good result.

Metro pays more attention to electricity providers in China than elsewhere.