Netherlands: Why doesn't Action have shelf plans?
- DRC Discount Retail Consulting GmbH
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Discount Variety Retail Chain Action manager's life is anything but boring with a surprising 'unboxing' every day. The discounter is eager to dispel more preconceptions: "You see all types of cars in our parking lots."
"Be like Mondo Duplantis"
Action's impressive growth in Europe has been arousing the amazement and admiration of retail observers for years. The secret of the non-food discount chain can be summarized in a simple formula for success, says regional country director Bart Raeymaekers, who witnessed its growth from fewer than 300 to more than 3,000 stores first hand: "Action = Price x Surprise x People." And all of that with a touch of sustainability.
Every euro you don't spend yourself as a retailer, you don't have to ask your customers for. So, strive for efficiency. Constantly question yourself and always strive for improvement. Like an athlete: you need the mindset of someone like pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, who recently broke his world record again. We develop robust processes, roll them out to all countries, and continuously improve them. There's no such thing as coincidence at Action.
Smart shopping
An important success factor is the surprising range: every week there are 150 new items on the store shelves. This is not only attractive for customers, but also for store managers, who do not know in advance what will be delivered. "If you are a manager at Action, you can unbox every day! How nice is that? By the way, we have an internal email address where employees can send suggestions for items they like, to inspire our buyers."
"The profile of our customers is also surprising," says Raeymaekers. "The prejudice is that many of our customers come from the lower classes, and that they buy from us out of necessity. That is not the case. Just under one third of our customers come from the higher income class, a little less than one third is middle class and only a little more than one third belongs to the lower income group. You see all types of cars in the parking lot of an Action. It's just smart buying."
"At least one grower per store"
You can have the best store formula, but people make the difference. "Norms and values, that's what we select hard for when recruiting. We first look at who you are, then at what you can do. We invest heavily in internal training: our goal is to have at least one internal grower per store. Our store managers do get responsibility: we don't have planograms, they decide on shelf stacks themselves, and on orders too. We only have one KPI: the total turnover of the store."
The high level of employee engagement is reflected in the biennial satisfaction survey "The Voice of Action", with an unprecedented participation rate of more than 90%. Raeymaekers' career is a good illustration of the opportunities that the retailer offers: he started as an area manager at Action in April 2012, when Belgium only had 35 stores. After that, he also led the chain in France and Germany. Today, he is responsible for Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Portugal, Spain and Italy as one of the three regional country directors at the company – because Action has now split Europe into three parts.
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