(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) French retail chain Geant has entered Abu Dhabi in a big way with the opening of its hypermarket at the Yas Mall.
Geant already has supermarkets operating in Abu Dhabi, and a hypermarket in Al Ain. But, its the first hypermarket at the iconic Yas Mall, which would make its presence felt strongly on the retail scene.
At a launcing ceremony, Mark Anthony Lack, chief operating officer of Geant told Khaleej Times that Abu Dhabi is an exciting place to do business despite competetion. The reail company will spend Dh1 billion on opening new hyper markets and smaller stores in the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait in the next three years.
Negotiations are in final phase to open two hypermarkets in Dragon Mart and Fujairah Mall next year, two more will be opened in Seif Murraq and BDM in Bahrain.
"Then there would be smaller version of neighbourhood supermarkets, or Geant Easy, which will be opened according to the avaibility of a right location, space, rent and its business viability," said Lack.
Geant Easy offers prices of hypermarket as smaller grocery stores sell daily used items at 10-20 per cent more prices, due to various reasons including lack of purchasing power, he said.
He said that the drop in oil prices has not affected sales, and as with the Christmas next week, shopping season was going strong.
"Our sales are going up. We are pleased with progress of the sales... We are growing more than the market trend this is what we want to sustain," Lack said.
In order to get a stronger footfall into the store, an attractive offer has also been launched whereby on every Dh100 spend customer will get a chance to enter a Grand Draw to win one million dirhams in cash.
There will also be weekly draws through which 500 winners will take home generous prizes that include a year's shopping at Geant, TVs, Ipads etc.
On the market share, the chief operating officer said that the UAE retail market is led by Lulu, followed by Carrefoure and Spinnys. However, with the anchor store at the Yas Mall, Geant has taken over the third slot.
The UAE's retail market annual turnover is $10 billion, while its growth year-on-year was 5.6 per cent in 2014.
The store has allocated 25 per cent space for fresh produce out of the total 120,000 squre feet space to offer over 40,000 products on shelves ranging from fresh produce to a variety of authentic French bakary and confectionary. There are big sections for seafood, fashionware, electronics, sporting foods, household items, cosmetics.
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