The brand with a hard discount decided to slow down the pace of opening stores and reduce the number of references on the shelves.
It is a newcomer in the mass distribution landscape. Launched three months ago with the promise of offering 5-10% cheaper prices than its direct competitors, Toujust has run into some struggles that are already forcing it to revise its version.
Because recent supply problems affecting up to 60% of supply in recent months have frozen store openings. The company, which was initially expected to open 50 points of sale in 2023, is targeting twenty points of sale.
“The difficulty is getting manufacturers to want to join us.”
“In fact, there are difficulties. (…) We have decided to slow down the development this year to unite our suppliers, organize our stores and ensure that our teams can also follow,” explains Fabrice Gerber, founder of Toujust, in BFM Business.
“Today, we have to move slowly because some critics are pointing fingers at us. Our model is a bit scary, it’s something new…”. In fact, Toujust intends to eliminate the middlemen as much as possible and work directly with the producers. To do this, its suppliers are linked to the capital through a 25% stake. 160 of them have joined the network so far.
“We said that from the beginning, and the difficulty is to make the industrialists want to join us,” admitted Fabrice Gerber, before recalling that “their responsibility is not binding” in case of financial difficulties “because they are in a separate legal structure.”
Fewer referrals
Besides the slowdown in opening pace, Toujust has begun to review its establishment: “We’ve really changed a lot of things since we revised the entire store layout three months ago,” Fabrice Gerber confirms. “We reduced the number of references. We started with 11,000,” compared with 2,500 to 4,000 for its direct competitors Aldi and Lidl.
“We realized it was too much because the customer was lost in it, and we couldn’t prove that we were really cheaper on the most consumed products,” he specifies.
To date, Toujust has four stores. “We are very satisfied with the openings (…), we continue our growth, we have two openings planned for the end of August,” notes Fabrice Gerber. The brand still plans to establish itself abroad in the long term, in particular in Spain, Portugal, Morocco or Switzerland.
