• In about ten years, the Breton brand Ecomiam has become number 3 on the frozen food market in France.

  • It now has 63 stores and plans to establish itself throughout the territory.

  • Its founder Daniel Sauvaget breaks the codes of mass distribution by displaying its margins on each of the products it sells.

He likes to compare his sign "to the Gallic village which resists the invader". Understand the actors of the large distribution. It is moreover to thwart the practices of supermarkets that Daniel Sauvaget embarked on the Ecomiam adventure with a first frozen food store which opened its doors in 2011 in Relecq-Kerhuon near Brest. From the start, the former manager of the Tilly-Sabco slaughterhouse, placed in compulsory liquidation in 2018, opted for transparency by displaying his margins as well as the traceability and origin of the products, most of which are unprocessed and 100 % French. “Customers won't find frozen mangoes or pineapples in our stores,” he points out. But it is a choice to have a tighter range of products and we assume it for the sake of consistency”.

No promotion either at Ecomiam, where "prices are fixed for six months", nor superfluous packaging with products packaged in raw form.

A simplicity that has won over customers.

Because in ten years, "the Gallic village" has grown a lot.

Number 3 in France for the distribution of frozen products, behind Picard and Thiriet, Ecomiam now has 63 stores.

"Densify our presence throughout the territory"

Half are located in Brittany, its historic stronghold, but the brand no longer hesitates to venture outside its Armorican peninsula. “We first developed on the Atlantic arc with Normandy, the Pays de la Loire and New Aquitaine, underlines Daniel Sauvaget. But our strategy is now to densify our presence throughout the territory”. Already present in Île-de-France, Occitanie and Rhône-Alpes, Ecomiam announced during its IPO in October 2020 its desire to open 20 stores per year. A target already exceeded last year with the opening of 29 points of sale.

Ecomiam's good health is also reflected in the sharp 32.1% increase in its store sales in the first quarter of the 2021-2022 financial year (from October 1 to December 31, 2021).

“At constant scope, however, we are down compared to 2020, tempers the business manager.

But 2020 was not a normal year either because frozen food sales soared with the two confinements”.

A success that benefits local SMEs

Ecomiam, like its competitors, has indeed taken advantage of the health crisis by retaining new customers.

“The image of frozen products had been tarnished by past food scandals, specifies Daniel Sauvaget.

It is now much better and many have discovered or rediscovered all the virtues of frozen foods, especially in terms of freshness”.

In full growth, the Ecomiam brand also brings in its wake a whole fabric of local SMEs with which it collaborates.

This is the case of the Fournil de Tréodet which manufactures a whole range of frozen breads.

Installed for six years in a business incubator, the company is thus preparing in the coming weeks to move to a factory seven times larger.

“It's a great meeting, welcomes Vincent Delanoë, its director.

We bring them our qualitative know-how and they volume.

This allows us to go through the stages more quickly and to have a vision for the future”.

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