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Jérôme Meyer was already part of Aldi when the German discounter launched its entry into the Swiss market almost two decades ago. On October 27, 2005, Aldi Suisse opened its first four locations. Two in Thurgau: Weinfelden, Amriswil, plus one each in Altenrhein SG and Gibstorf AG. Eighteen years and 239 branches later, Blick meets the 44-year-old actor at the headquarters in Schwarzenbach SG. The first branches are no longer recognized today. Meyer: “You see, we learned a lot. Aldi has come of age.”
Blick: Mr. Meyer, your candidates missed their opportunity to enter parliament. So disappointed?
Jerome Meyer: That wasn’t the point of our “Choose Aldi” posters (laughs). We neither did politics nor ran for political office in our election campaign.
Your advertising propaganda has offended part of the population!
The timing was very good. We are eighteen years old, then you can vote and be elected. Instead of the usual birthday campaign, we decided to tone down the elections. This brought us a lot of attention.
Such an action was unthinkable when it started in Switzerland at the end of October 2005!
This is certainly the case. We have learned a lot over the years and adapted to Switzerland’s needs. We became more self-confident.
What has changed the most?
For example, cash register. Aldi’s unique product with no collection area for goods at the end. It gave a lot to talk about and went unappreciated. Now, like all other retailers, we have a collection pool so that we can collect our purchases without rushing. In the beginning, we were selling our products in boxes and on pallets. This is unthinkable today.
They reduced the non-food part of the product range…
…in favor of food. We started with a total of 700 products, today there are 1800 products. In the beginning there was almost no Swiss food because it was difficult for us to find local suppliers. As of today, we realize more than 50 percent of our sales with products of Swiss origin. A real revolution has occurred in the field of freshness. The range of fruits and vegetables used to consist of 30 products, but today there are over 100 products.
You started with four branches. How many will there be by the end of this year?
We are opening our 239th branch this week. The expansion rate is now slowing down a bit. We are growing with 4-5 branches every year instead of 10-12 branches. We remain committed to the target size of 300 branches for our Swiss network in the medium term.
Are Greenfield stores no longer in demand?
The spread in the countryside has been largely completed, we are now increasingly targeting cities. Zurich and Geneva still have mega potential for us and we also want to open more branches in Basel and Bern city centre. Things pick up on October 26th. We are opening a branch in Glatt, Switzerland’s best-selling shopping mall, on the Wallisellen A1 motorway.
Are branches open 365 days a year from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., such as the Stadelhofen train station in Zurich, making a profit?
In any case. On the one hand, we have less staff there but more self-scanning cash registers. Additionally, as we say in technical jargon, we only work with products that rotate very quickly. These are drinks, croissants, fruits and vegetables, beer and sausages in the summer.
Dual citizen Jérôme Meyer (44) has served as country manager of Aldi Suisse since October 1, 2020. He spent his entire working life at a discount store. Today the company has 239 branches throughout Switzerland, has 3 distribution centers and employs 4,000 people. The company keeps its job figures confidential. “The profits we make in Switzerland stay in the country,” Meyer assures. The Swiss-French lives in Wil SG during the week to be closer to Aldi’s headquarters in Schwarzenbach SG. He spends weekends in Freiburg with his wife and four children.
Dual citizen Jérôme Meyer (44) has served as country manager of Aldi Suisse since October 1, 2020. He spent his entire working life at a discount store. Today the company has 239 branches throughout Switzerland, has 3 distribution centers and employs 4,000 people. The company keeps its job figures confidential. “The profits we make in Switzerland stay in the country,” Meyer assures. The Swiss-French lives in Wil SG during the week to be closer to Aldi’s headquarters in Schwarzenbach SG. He spends weekends in Freiburg with his wife and four children.
Retailers are once again advertising price cuts. Was it about inflation?
Inflation has not yet been overcome in Switzerland. However, the peak has been passed and the supply situation is gradually easing. I predict inflation will decrease. We are also seeing more and more middle-class households having to tighten their belts and carefully calculate where to spend and where to cut back. Here we reduce our prices as much as possible and we are the first to do so.
What are you busy with?
This year we gained a lot of new customers, especially from the younger generation, those who are starting their first job or about to start a family. With new customers, sales of our organic foods also increased significantly. Despite the price increase, you can shop from us without missing any opportunity.
Aldi’s entry into the market forced Coop and Migros to expand their cheap lines. But when it comes to branded and conventional items, Aldi costs about the same as major retailers.
The quality of our cheapest products is significantly better than the cheaper lines of large distributors. In the middle price-performance range, we are still cheaper than our colleagues in the retail sector.
A new university study shows that organic produce is unfairly much more expensive than conventional produce from major distributors.
… but not our biography.
Why do you come here so energetically?
We are the ones who sell organic products at the cheapest price. We don’t wipe and apply quite the same margins as traditional products. Organic should not be a luxury. It’s important to me that people know this.
But you’re not talking about organic bud here, are you?
Our prices are 30 percent lower than our competitors’ similar bud organic products. Although our organic range offers the same standard as Bud organic products, we are not allowed to carry this label, so we made do with it. With our own organic brand “retour aux Resources” we go one step further than the normal organic standard requires and offer the highest organic standard in Switzerland. We started with milk from antibiotic-free livestock, then came meat, and now poultry and bread without added enzymes, as well as certified fruits and vegetables grown organically without the use of slaughterhouse waste (in composting).
Source :Blick
I’m Tim David and I work as an author for 24 Instant News, covering the Market section. With a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism, my mission is to provide accurate, timely and insightful news coverage that helps our readers stay informed about the latest trends in the market. My writing style is focused on making complex economic topics easy to understand for everyone.
