2023-06-14 05:54:23
Is this the end of fast trade in France? These start-up home food delivery companies, whose warehouses have flourished in major Western cities during the Covid-19 pandemic are in great difficulty. Focus on one of them: Getir, a Turkish company which seeks to become a leader on the world market but which, in France, is forced to lay off.
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At launch in June 2021, Getir’s scooters, flocked in large letters, read: your shopping in minutes “. It was the hook of the company. It was to be a post-Covid revolution, based on a bet: everyone will stay at home and order from their sofa. At first, it was good, assures Joann Tchissambo, CFDT delegate at Getir France: “ The shareholder’s speech was very interesting, very enticing. That is to say that we felt in the communication that there was a real desire to take care of the employees, to allow the employees to enter into a project in which everything would be possible. I arrived in the company as a delivery man, here I am today referent-stores of all the stores [entrepôts, NDLR] In France. So, we cannot say that there was no evolution. When today, a year and a half later, we see that the company is making a massive redundancy plan, it’s a shock. »
El Dorado was not one
The shock, because even without being profitable, Getir bought out its competitors Frichti and Gorillas last winter. But the fall is painful with a loss of 100 million euros in 2022. The accumulated debts of the three sister companies are soaring. “ With Getir, as with all other companies in the quick commerce[livraison rapide]we are dealing with entrepreneurs who have seen an El Dorado and who have all gone down the same path thinking that it was both prosperous, important, profitable, but who finally realize that it is not and which, suddenly, bend the saplingsexplains Olivier Dauvers, a journalist specializing in trade. There was no malice originally. They came to France quite simply because in their eyes there was a market which must have been counted in billions of euros… At best, it is counted in hundreds of millions ».
The share of products that require instantaneous delivery urgency is ultimately very low. This overestimation of the market is pushing Getir to change its strategy: closure of all its warehouses outside Île-de-France with an ongoing layoff plan and around 900 employees affected. “ It’s very complicated because these are people who were on permanent contracts and who had commitments like loansOumou Gassama also tells the CFDT. Some have personal situations where they need a salary at the end of the month and suddenly Getir cut that short. »
Back to reality for Getir as for its German competitor Flink also in very great difficulty. In the end, there will only be one left, and competitors are everywhere: distributors (Auchan, Carrefour, etc.) have their own delivery service, and platforms like Uber or Deliveroo are also developing their own tools.
An idea of soft power Turkish
For Getir, it works more in the United Kingdom where the store as a place of purchase, a place of choice is less strong than in France. This is also the case in New York, which proves that it is difficult to trace consumption models, depending on the country.
The other lesson is that the choice to stand out by having workers sign permanent contracts did not work for these delivery start-ups. The social promise has not kept in the face of the variable orders that require ultra-flexible workers.
In Istanbul, the brand’s birthplace, the results are excellent, the Turks are addicted to delivery platforms. And thanks to exceptional fundraising campaigns, the start-up is valued at nearly $12 billion, money from pension funds in California and Abu Dhabi. Promoting Turkey internationally is the stated ambition of Nazim Salur, founder of Getir: ” That Turkey wants to show the rest of the world that it is capable of being a country worthy of the others is beyond doubt.explains Olivier Dauvers, we see it in the air at a time when Istanbul is trying to become a hub for Turkish Airlines to be as global and global as Emirates is. But this desire can only be based on an economic activity that is sustainable because it is profitable. Build an idea of soft power on a business model that is not stable, it is still a mild madness and I dare to imagine that those who have put billions in it are quite aware of this madness »
Getir France did not wish to answer our questions. The future of warehouses dark-stores criticized by local residents, now regulated by town halls, is pending in France.
>> To read also: Report – “We live in hell”: in France, the discontent rises against the “dark stores
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