After the liquidation of Justo & Bueno, which left more than 1,000 stores and 20,000 unemployed, Grupo Olímpica, owned by the Char family, decided to bet on the market for hard discount with the opening of Ísimo.
The purpose of the Char family with the chain of stores is to compete with D1 and Ara. So, Ísimo will have more than 400 stores throughout the country, so They need workers in operational and administrative positions.
The chain currently has 96 stores operating nationwide in 10 departments: Atlántico, Magdalena, Bolívar, Cesar Santander, Norte de Santander, Antioquia, Tolima Caldas and recently opened in Cundinamarca.
The goal for this month of March is to have 420 stores open in the country. “In the 420 open sales points, $150,000 million, equivalent to approximately $360 million per point, have been invested, including distribution centers, technology equipment, cold rooms, cash registers, etc. (…) We must end May with 2,100 employees,” José Manuel Carbonell, Olímpica’s financial vice president and leader of this new project, told Mall & Retail. Additionally, Ísimo included former employees and locals of Justo & Bueno, which is now in liquidation, in its operations.
D1, owned by Grupo Santo Domingo, was the first chain to arrive in the country, and currently, the company has 2,000 stores throughout Colombia.
It should be remembered that last year D1 displaced Almacenes Éxito as the ‘king’ of retail sales. The hard discount chain obtained income in 2021 for $9.91 billion, with a growth of 32% compared to 2020. These results placed it above Alkosto, whose income the previous year was $9.09 billion; while Almacenes Éxito, which had always led the ranking in Colombia, obtained sales of $8.58 billion with the Grupo Éxito brand.