The successful chain of Juan Roig has gotten a 'white label' on the other side of the Mediterranean.
His name is
File.
And there, it could be said, the differences that this
Turkish line of supermarkets
, in full expansion phase, has with Mercadona end.
Its logos, the characteristic green of its corporate color and even its commercial strategy resemble, like two drops of water, those of the company born in Puebla de Farnals.
You judge.
File was born in 2015 as a second chain
owned by BIM
, the
leading
discount supermarket company in terms of
revenue in Turkey
and second by number of establishments.
With more than 7,400 stores spread throughout all the neighborhoods of Turkey, the Istanbul company, which is listed on the stock exchange, has established itself in recent years in Morocco and Egypt.
According to its corporate website
, File has 93 establishments open and is in an expansion phase.
Customer comments on Turkish social media mostly praise her.
Some highlight the variety of products and their freshness, the existence of delicatessens and the good treatment of their employees, although some value the prices negatively, when compared to other local supermarkets.
Something important in a country that in the last two decades has turned, by leaps and bounds, to a model that has emptied the bazaars to fill the neighborhood supermarkets and shopping centers.
The arguments of the buyers differ little from the aims of the File brand.
"
The main objective of this model is to satisfy the
food, personal care and general cleaning needs of consumers with healthy and fresh products that are produced with good or better quality, with high standards and offered for sale at low prices," it reads your website.
Good, nice and cheap, with a modern, attractive and innovative packaging.
Or not so much.
The logo of Harras, its white brand of food products, is identical to that of the local Hacendado
;
The only thing that differentiates the Bosque Verde logo from that of Actisoft, the cleaning products brand, is that they have only left a couple of leaves from the original tree.
From Daycare to Deliplus there is not a D difference.
At least the rectangular shopping basket, from the original Mercadona emblem, has become oval.
The circle that surrounds it is identical.
Galip Aykaç, BIM's head of operations,
gave an interview to Fortune Turkey magazine in 2015 in which he acknowledged, at least partially, his
inspiration in the Valencian chain when launching File
.
"We wanted to find a different format based on examples seen in our trips abroad," he explains.
"While we were examining America, I said to look in Europe and we went to Spain. There we saw the market leader, Mercadona."
"
Mercadona is a structure specialized in different fields, leader in the Spanish market
. Its main characteristic is its
discount system and a high number of products
. We wanted to specialize in certain topics."
The result, in external opinion, gives rise to reopen the old debate of where the inspiration ends to start plagiarism.
There is no doubt about the success, in both countries, of a premium line under the slogan 'always low prices'.
Shop assistants of the Turkish supermarket chain FileEl Mundo
Turkish copies
Turkish knockoffs, though not supermarkets, date back decades.
In the 70s and 80s, a cinematographic genre became popular with more than twenty films that, with a low budget and
total disdain for copyrights -
what to say about the interpretations -, 'played' the Hollywood blockbusters.
His legacy includes titles such as
Karateci Kiz
(Girl karateka), Ramo - add the missing B - or
Dunyayi Kurtaran Adam
- for the reader, Star Wars
alla turca
-.
This trend has survived to this day and its latest victim has been
Pablo Alboran.
In mid-September, the singer-songwriter himself pointed out the Turkish interpreter
Erkan Erzurumlu
for the similarity of his recent song to the Spanish one, from 2017, No va a ser.
It is enough to compare the covers of his single and that of the Turk, watch the video clips of both and, above all, listen to both songs to think that, perhaps yes, Erzurumlu has been 'inspired' beyond his possibilities.
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