Makro - The ultra fresh approach

Source: Supply Chain Digital

Date :04/12/2007 10:10:55

Makro is well known to tobacconists, convenience stores, caterers and non-food retailers but office buyers, universities, vets or plumbers are all part of the Makro community.

Written by John O’ Hanlon & Produced by Kate Bradley

‘Cash & carry’ is a somewhat dated business description, resonating perhaps with cheap & cheerful or pay & display. Nevertheless it is a very important part or sub-sector of the retail trade.

Because many cash & carry outlets look so very much like regular supermarkets, there is a great temptation to treat them like retail outlets, however almost the first thing Hannes Floto, the newly appointed managing director of Makro UK, told me was that he dismisses this association. His customers, many of them, may be retailers (though as many are not) but he considers that his is a supply chain business – and of course he does not sell to the public as a retailer would.

A cash & carry supplies the trade. They tend to specialise, so a CTN (confectioner, tobacconist and newsagent) may go to a different supplier from an ironmonger or a food store. But Makro doesn’t really resemble any of the others, which may be why Floto found it difficult to compare his business directly with any competitor. But a regular cash & carry is a warehouse that its customers can pick over and raid for the goods they sell on or use in their business, typically in bulk.

Makro stores are radically different from that – though the benefits of price and availability are a given, they are more friendly to their customers as a hypermarket is to its consumers and they welcome non-traditional business customers.

A time to build

Makro Self Service Wholesalers Ltd began trading in the United Kingdom 35 years ago at Eccles in Manchester, and its headquarters is still there. On January 1st 1998, the Metro Group, one of Europe's biggest trading groups with outlets in 24 countries acquired the European cash & carry business of SHV Makro, in which Metro Group already held a 40 percent stake. Makro UK operates a network of 33 cash & carries across the country serving the UK’s major cities, and has a turnover in excess of £1 billion.

The international cash & carry network of which Makro UK is a part, covers over 500 self service wholesale stores worldwide. Under the brands Metro or Makro (you can’t use Metro in this country for example because Tesco got there first), 20 million commercial customers worldwide including hotels, restaurants, shops and grocery stores, caterers, hospitals and public offices as well as an increasing number of service providers can choose from up to 50,000 food and non-food products all in one place.

Hannes Floto comes to the UK from Makro Greece, where he was food buying director, an experience he is putting to good use as shall be seen…

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