The Ligurian Arcaplanet, the first player in Italy, in terms of turnover, in the distribution of products for pets, after having completed, last Saturday, the integration with the German brand Maxi Zoo (which has sold its stores in Italy), aims to increase the number of points of sale, particularly in the South, to go from the current 490 to 700 by 2025. An operation that provides for up to 1,500 hires and in which the company will invest approximately 100 million euros (for the real estate part only) , to which 50 million are added to implement digitization.
Nicolò Galante, CEO of Arcaplanet since April of this year, tells the story of the company’s projects, after the departure of the company’s founder, Michele Foppiani. The company from Carasco (in the Chiavarese area) since 2021 has the Cinven fund as its majority shareholder (which took over from Permira), while a minority stake is held by the German group of pet care Fressnapf, owner of the Maxi Zoo sign.
«Last October 1st – says Galante – we closed the connection operation between the 400 Arcaplanet stores and the 150 of the competitor Maxi Zoo, which will continue the sales with our brand; an operation that also marks the exit from the Italian market of Fressnapf. Net of 61 stores that we had to sell, upon request from the Competition Authority, to acquire those of Maxi Zoo, we come to 489 stores. But we plan to go up again, to more than 500, already by the end of the year ».
Galante, in fact, has an ambitious development project for the company, which is articulated on different levels. «We had two competing companies – he continues – and now we have only one with 2,700 employees: with the merger we have acquired a thousand people. And if in 2021, which had already been an extraordinary year, like 2020, because with the pandemic the attention for pets has grown, we have reached 400 million turnover, by the end of 2022 we plan to reach a figure higher than 500 million and close to 600 “. After all, continues the CEO, “our first goal (but not the only one, as we shall see, ndr) is to develop the Italian network of Arca, in particular in the South. Because we are very present up to Rome and less in the South, even if in stores that are in that area they offer very good performances. In short, between now and 2025, we want to go from 500 points of sale to 700, but without making further acquisitions. We simply intend to open 200 new stores in various geographic areas, in which 1,200 to 1,500 more people will work. The investment envisaged, for the sole acquisition of the points of sale, is approximately 100 million euros over three years “.
After Italy, says Galante, “we would like to see if our model, successful at national level, can also be successful abroad. We therefore intend to expand the expansion area to neighboring countries. We already have two stores in Switzerland but we aim to expand into the Mediterranean area of Europe. In the EU, however, it does not exist pet care, a supranational player of reference: there is Pets at Home in the UK, Fressnapf in the German area, others in the Iberian Peninsula, we in Italy. It is therefore necessary to see who will be able to propose themselves with a winning formula outside their own borders. We are studying the strengths of the best European players to make them ours: Pets at Home, for example, is effective in digital and on services, while Fressnapf is effective in products with its own brand. Putting these different points of excellence together can give a winning mix ». And Galante wants to focus on this mix, which he says: “From next year we will begin to identify the foreign countries in which to grow.” The CEO does not exclude arriving, one day, even overseas: “It will depend a lot on how Arcaplanet goes in the European countries it enters”.