For years, cohabitation in Greece concerned very specific groups and practices: students away from the family home and couples in a relationship.
Then came the crisis, which initially forced the professionals to share housing (lawyers, doctors and even craftsmen), while the domestic retail representatives were the last to discover the advantages of “sharing”.
The cohabitation of brands
In the logic of a complete commercial proposition and with the direct benefit of increasing revenue from rent collection, but also attracting a larger number of consumers, co-retailing started to become a trend in the domestic market as well.
Both at the Greek level and throughout Europe, the supermarket chains were the ones that established co-retailing, thus facing the high competition from online retailers and discount stores, as well as the tendency of consumers to shorten their shopping “trips” choosing convenience stores in their neighborhood.
A typical example was in 2013 the cooperation of the former Marinopoulos chain, then the exclusive licensee of the Carrefour brands, with Kotsovolos. The aforementioned “cohabitation” had assigned three Kotsovolos points to Marousi, Gerakas and Alimos. Of course, the cooperation has not existed for years.
However, the benefits of this practice, which also aims to improve the efficiency of each point of sale with the expected increase in traffic, were subsequently seen by other retailers and in fact, in recent years, co-housing has become more common.
The deals between Fourlis, AB Vassilopoulos, Pepco, Plaisio, Sklavenitis, Public and Jysk
For example at the reborn IKEA at Eleftherios Venizelos Airport, which is no longer a huge monobrand store but has been transformed by the Fourlis group into a shopping park, in addition to the Swedish furniture and homewares brand, consumers currently have access to sportswear and footwear through Intersport and in health and wellness products from the British company Holland & Barrett (both chains are developed by Vassilis Fourlis’ group). While within the next two to three months, a large store of the Plaisio technology chain will open in the same area, with a total area of 2,800 sq.m.
Vassilis Fourlis, a co-retailing fanatic for years, uses the collaboration with AB Vassilopoulos to increase the Holland & Barrett network and already three stores of the British brand have opened within the same number of supermarkets of the Greek subsidiary of the Dutch-Belgian group Ahold-Delhaize in Elliniko, Nea Erythraia and Pylaia (Thessaloniki).
Possibly the Intersport network will be used in the same direction in order to create points, with products related to sports.
At the same time, the “cohabitation” of the Polish Pepco and AB Vasilopoulos, which started in November 2023, already counts 5 “collaborative” stores.
In essence, it is not a shop-in-shop project, since the two corporate entities operate independently, although under the same roof, with AB Vassilopoulos proceeding to reduce the sales space in certain of its stores, granting it to Pepco for rent. The average store area of the Polish chain in AB stores is about 500 square meters.
The cooperation with AB Vassilopoulos will continue, as stated by Mr. Konstantinos Vlassis, Expansion Manager Greece for Pepco, with the two sides considering other cases of co-working, especially in the province. The new Pepco AB store will open in the next few days in Giannitsa.
Unlike AB, the synergies with Public (two Pepco stores operate in Thessaloniki and a third one on Syngrou Avenue in Kallithea within the stores of the technology chain of the Olympia group of Panos Germanos) seem to have come to an end, as the remaining areas of the technology chain is smaller in area.
In addition, because proximity to large food stores is something common in the markets where Pepco develops in the Greek market, stores of the Polish chain operate next to large stores of the Sklavenitis supermarket chain.
Also, six years ago the Danish chain Jysk, with 63 stores currently in the Greek market, collaborated with Media Markt (the German chain’s domestic network has been acquired by Public), opening a store in Gerakas.
Sweet collaborations
In addition to retailers, chains from the catering sector are also developing partnerships, such as the one between the northern Helladic chain Tekernlis and the Grigoris Mikrogemmata chain.
The two brands are co-located in the store on 64 Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, at the Megaro Metro stop, while the Tekernlis store is housed in the premises of the Grigori chain at Thessaloniki’s train station. At the same time, Tekernlis has expanded to the commercial village of Spata, now owned by Lamda Development, in collaboration with Autogrill.
Because co-retailing will continue to grow
The coexistence of different retail concepts under the same roof has increased in the last five years not only in Greece, but throughout Europe and according to economic analysts, this is a trend that will continue to develop due to two factors:
First, due to the rise of e-commerce, retailers don’t need as much space as they historically did, so large stores will need plenty of “roommates” to remain viable.
Second, retailers will have to constantly innovate and think outside the box to increase sales in the brick-and-mortar network. Partnerships with experiential brands or online players create a unique in-store experience, and therefore we are likely to see more partnerships between traditional retailers and start-up retailers.
Source: ot.gr
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