The purchase of everyday goods is to be centralized. The cooperatives must relinquish power.
The retail giant Migros is about to undergo a major renovation. Migros wants to centralize the area that procures everyday goods. In future, bread, vegetables, cleaning supplies and shampoo will be procured from a single location within Migros. Today, this still happens in some regions or elsewhere in the widely ramified Migros group.
We hope to be a bit more powerful.
This is a big step for Migros. “We hope that the reorganization will make us a little more powerful,” says Marcel Schlatter, head of the Migros media office. In the future, there will only be one central procurement office within the Migros Group, the so-called supermarket AG.
Cooperatives have yet to agree
This project is being driven forward by the Migros headquarters. However, the regional cooperatives still have to agree to the project. In the past, they have always resisted greater centralization and insisted on autonomy.
But times have changed in the meantime: Migros is only just barely profitable at its core – the supermarket business. In recent years, it has lost customers to the competition. That is why the Migros headquarters and the cooperatives are being forced to take this step from outside, so to speak.
One is aware that the competition never sleeps, says Schlatter. Therefore: “It was clear to us that we had to move and optimize the structures.” There is definitely potential at Migros to become leaner and more powerful.
No changes for customers
How exactly the supermarket AG will look like and which tasks it should actually take on has yet to be decided. The cooperatives will bend over the project by the end of May. It is planned that the new company should be active within the Migros universe from next year.
And what does this conversion mean for customers? The Migros supermarkets should still look the same after the change, emphasizes media spokesman Schlatter. “But of course – our goal is to remain at the forefront in terms of price and performance.” Migros wants to make up ground again compared to the competition.