Enrique Martinez, CEO, Groupe Fnac Darty

Enrique Martinez, CEO of Groupe Fnac Darty on the Future of TCG Retail

We asked Mr Martinez how he imagines the balance between online and bricks & mortar retail will be in five years’ time, and what he thinks will be the key to sales success.

Within the model that we advocate, online sales will continue to grow, hand in hand with physical retail. The key for retailers will be to create the conditions of a seamless customer experience across every channel. It is a virtuous circle: each time we open a new Fnac or Darty store, we observe that over 50% of the click-and collect sales in that store are generated by customers that had never bought on fnac.com before.

What about mergers and acquisitions? Will we see more “big pervasive” players or a multiplication of smaller ones?

Several consolidation moves have taken place in the past years, which created a number of European-sized companies. Mergers and acquisitions are positive when they bring together complementary companies like Fnac and Darty, but they are not an end in themselves. There are other options for a company to increase its competitiveness. At Fnac Darty, for instance, we firmly believe that strong partnerships with bestin-class partners are a very smart and effective way to gain a substantial competitive advantage.