Reliability as brand core

"The price transparency brought about by digitalisation is a blessing for us." That's something you hardly ever or never hear in the trade. Simon Gfeller is completely relaxed in saying this because he adds: "For we are the cost leaders on the Swiss Market."
However the place where he says it is not necessarily where you would assume the centre of digital change to be. In Dotzigen, a village with a population of 1 500 inhabitants between Bern and Biel in Switzerland, is where Landi has its headquarters.
Sorry, who? This is one question which should definitely never be asked, not even outside Switzerland. After all, we are talking of a company worth billions, even if you wouldn't think so when looking at the address.
Whereby: the fact that Landi was "a digital dinosaur" in the retail trade until recently is even admitted by Simon Gfeller himself. But he's allowed to, because as head of marketing and sales as well as deputy CEO, he contributed to the work on turning this around, at the latest with the online shop which was opened in October 2017.
So who is Landi? The name wasn't introduced until 1994, but the cooperative headquarters were already founded 30 years earlier. There are currently 280 Landi stores in the German- and French-speaking areas of Switzerland. The Landi shops are run by the independent cooperatives. Marketing, sales and logistics are the responsibility of the marketing organisation Landi Schweiz. These in turn belong to Fenaco's retail trade division.
What's special about Landi's business model is its assortment: it is small, and is compiled while taking special quality considerations into account. In concrete figures, small means around 8 000 continuous articles at permanently low prices and around 1 000 so-called in-/out-articles. Around 65 per cent of sales are made with products from the 30 own brands.
That's why procurement plays a major role. Somewhat more than half of the products originate from Switzerland: "Swissness" and Swiss quality are emphasised, but procurement exclusively from Switzerland is only carried out in the product groups for which it makes sense. The rest is imported from 41 countries. Almost one third comes from Europe, a good ten per cent from China.
The second largest theme in procurement is quality. Also the roots of this quality mindset at Landi lie, says Gfeller, in agriculture. He explains that being perceived by consumers as not necessarily leading in terms of price, but definitely in terms of price-performance…