Quick Take — Amazon launches non-food virtual discount shop against Temu and Shein and first price line in groceries

Amazon just launched an ultracheap bargain store that takes aim at rivals Temu and Shein. Just don’t look for it on your computer-Amazon is keeping the new store largely separate from its main site, for good reason. Financial Times Newsletter 14 November 2024.

Below: the fancy private label – name happy belly – that Amazon created for food in 2016, which looked a lot like the fancy brands Esselunga had in the 1960s and 1970s . Now there seems to have been a noticeable ‘change of pace’ with the new Amazon Saver first-price line.

Compiled 14 November, updated 15 November 2024

Giuseppe Caprotti at OSA360, in front of 2000 entrepreneurs, in Milan on 8 November 2024

At OSA 360, the biggest event for entrepreneurs in Milan, I had the pleasure of telling an audience of more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, producers and retailers about the origins of Esselunga and all the innovations I introduced in the company up to 2004, inspired by the themes of my book ‘Le Ossa dei Caprotti’. It was exciting to share this vision, which continues to evolve through the initiatives of the Guido Venosta Foundation

Ideas on the internationalisation of Italian large-scale retail trade from the book “Le Ossa dei Caprotti” at the Stati Generali dell’Export, Milan 11 October 2024

From the missed national champion of the 1960s, with GS – Esselunga, to the multi-regional companies of today. The opportunities missed by Italian large-scale retailers in e-commerce but also in the acquisitions that foreign retailers are making instead

Friends of Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgina Venosta: architect Vico Magistretti and publisher Rosellina Archinto

My father Bernardo wanted Vico Magistretti to design the Esselunga superstore in Pantigliate, which opened in 2001, where two years later the first of the 'Bar Atlantique' (now 'Bar Atlantic') opened, also designed by Magistretti, who renovated the food outlets that I had strongly desired since the first superstores. The great architect worked for my father, but he was also a close friend of my mother GiorginaOf mutual friends Rosellina Archinto, who animated Milan's cultural life for decades

The Caprotti family and architects: Ignazio Gardella and the first Esselunga Superstore

When Bernardo Caprotti, with remarkable foresight, decided to build larger supermarkets, his passion for architecture led him to seek the collaboration of great architects such as Ignazio Gardella, whose designs changed the concept of the supermarket from a simple container to a building with distinctive architecture, another element that allowed Esselunga to strengthen brand recognition and establish its shops as a central service to neighbourhoods, especially the most peripheral ones. Such large supermarkets, however, need to be filled, and at that point my American experience suggests how to do this through 'non-food', that is, 'everything that is not food': from products of all kinds (from stationery to laundry to crockery) to services (customer care, express checkouts, home shopping, e-commerce).

‘ESSELUNGA AT HOME’: the first large-scale retail e-commerce in Italy

We saw at Delhaize in Belgium a system that allows customers to do their shopping either via the web or via fax and have it delivered to their home. Bernardo, although not convinced, gives his approval. ... we started with e- commerce in Monza in March 2001, using the warehouse of the supermarket in Via San Fruttuoso, which we adapted as a dark store