A hundred years ago this Friday, August 15, 1925, Migros was born. The small enterprises that started its activity with five Ford-T trucks crisscrossing the city of Zurich, has since become the orange giant, number one Swiss retail.
On August 10, 1925, Gottlieb Duttweiler sent a request to the Zurich police prefecture: he asked for permission to “offer for sale” food in public locations, the purpose of his new business being to sell as quickly, the most effectively and, therefore, the cheapest as possible of the products on board vehicles that will cross the districts of Zurich. The company Migros SA, founded on the same day, has a capital of 100,000 francs, five truck-magasins, an office and two warehouses.
At the beginning, Migros only sells six products: coffee, soap, rice, coconut fat, sugar and cornettes. Not only is the capacity of the items sold higher than in competition, but the prices are also 10 to 30%lower.
About about a year after the circulation of its trucks, Gottlieb Duttweiler opens a first stationary store, located in the industrial district of Zurich. Established new siege in Migros, the building houses a sales room, an office, a garage for magasin trucks, a warehouse and a packaging center in the basement. On the day of its inauguration, the store offers 48 products, including fresh fruit and potatoes not available in magasin trucks.
In 1932, Migros Berne opened the first store in French -speaking Switzerland in Neuchâtel. It was she who supplied it entirely until 1949, despite the foundation in 1941 of the Cooperative Migros society, located in Neuchâtel, also covering the canton of Friborg. Whatever, the Bernese open a store in Sugiez, in the canton of Friborg. Almost at the same time, the Vaudois, themselves set up in Bulle (Friborg). But the Neuchâtels fear seeing their new under-exploited distribution center. They therefore request the mediation of the Federation of Migros cooperatives. This affair will take more than a year to find its outcome, which will remain unknown since there is no written trace of the result of mediation. Today, the municipality of Bulle is part of the catchment area of the Neuchâtel-Fribourg cooperative and the Sugiez store has disappeared.
Conserves et M-Budget
In 1945, Migros bought a canchofszell, Thurgovie. Thanks to the modernization of machines, production increases continuously. In 1956, the demand for canned cans was such that Migros opened a second production site, in French -speaking Switzerland this time: preserves Estavayer SA. Migros is then ready to tackle the post-war period, which will see the demand for preserves increase without discontinuing. However, as early as 1956, demand could no longer be satisfied. Migros then built a second production site in Estavayer-le-Lac, from where it supplied French-speaking Switzerland.
During the transition to self-service, in 1948, Migros peeled each operation of the sales process to rationalize it as much as possible. During the rearrangement, Migros officials are inspired by free foreign service stores. From the English, they practically borrow what the “round head shelves”, these goods with goods with large rounded sides. The same goes for the labeling of product groups.
In 1996, nine years before Aldi and Lidl opened their first stores in Switzerland, Migros launched six daily products for small budgets and large families under the M-Budget brand. Gianni Lutz, marketing project manager, has a clear idea of the desired design from the start: “He must be contrary to all the notions of good taste.” In 1998, the first “M-Budget festivals” were born. Five years later, the family has grown well and the label became cult. Today, energy drinks, mobile phones, chips, pasta and milk are the most sold M-Budget products.
In 2022, Migros launched a vast consultation on a renunciation of its greatest taboo: the sale of alcohol, whose ban had been registered in the statutes of the company by its founder. The response of cooperators will be unequivocal, with “no” more than 70% in most regional cooperatives. If they remain banished from the shelving of its supermarkets, the orange giant nevertheless offers for a long time a large palette of wines, beer and other spirits on its online portal as in its subsidiary at low cost denner.
This article was published automatically. Sources: ATS / AWP