Discount Retail Chain Bara, owned by the Mexican retail giant FEMSA, aims to intensify competition with discounters Tiendas 3B and Neto by bolstering its discount store Bara in 2024 and 2025, expecting accelerated growth, as hard discount stores continue to make strides.
“One of the strategies we are pursuing in proximity is Bara, an important component of the multiformat vertical. We had very strong goals in 2023, and our intention is to continue strengthening that business in 2024 and in the coming year,” said Francisco Camacho Beltrán, former corporate director, FEMSA.
During discussions with analysts regarding their financial results, Camacho Beltrán emphasized the significance of the proprietary brand in their "hard discount" business, which has been performing well. In the past year alone, FEMSA opened 88 new Bara stores in Mexico, increasing from 271 units in 2022 to 359, marking a 32% growth in its "hard discount" format, like Tiendas 3B or Neto.
FEMSA has hired a new director for this area, Claudia Sotelo, an expert in multiformat and discount stores, who has been working over the past few months to boost the potential of Bara for faster growth.
In the fourth quarter of last year alone, total revenues from this business segment grew by 33.7% compared to the same period in 2022, driven by a 13.0% increase in same-store sales, reflecting robust performance in grocery, home hygiene, and convenience categories, primarily fueled by beverage sales.
Tiendas 3B has recently gone public in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and will open at least 12,000 additional units in Mexico, nearly six times the 2,288 branches it closed last year. In 2023, the company opened stores at a rate of one every 22 hours, leveraging data to identify communities with over 10,000 inhabitants where its 800-square-meter store model fits.
