Watch the interview with Cyril Besse, Senior Partner at Univers Retail for the special Retail issue of Capital.fr
Read the written interview below:
Tell us a little about Univers Retail.
Founded in 2003 by Jean-Manuel Urvoy, Univers Retail is a management consultancy specializing in the retail market BtoB and BtoC. Univers Retail employs a staff of around fifty, and boasts fast-growing sales. The latter rose from 4.3 million euros in 2015 to 6.1 million in 2017.
What services do you offer?
Our business is to help our customers perform in highly competitive, fast-changing markets, by focusing on improving their growth and profitability. To achieve this, we benefit from a multi-faceted expertise offering in four main areas.
The first, called " Omnichannel ", covers all our services aimed at helping our customers implement e-commerce and marketplace projects with an omnichannel vision.
Our second core business is supply chain management. Our expertise enables us to intervene at every stage of the value chain, from product sourcing to sales forecasting, distribution schemes and customer promise optimization.
The third division, "Product to Store", covers everything to do with the control and consistency of the company's product data.
Finally, the " Governance " division oversees our activities relating to the governance of both information systems and organizations.
What sets you apart from your competitors?
Independence is what sets us apart. Our advice and support are objective and pursue a single goal:
to serve our customers' best interests.
Another notable difference is that Univers Retail specializes in retail, and we are true specialists in this market. Retail is our DNA. Finally, our staff are all retail experts with operational experience, so our approach is relevant, pragmatic and results-focused.
Who are your customers?
At BtoB and BtoC, we work for major retail groups active in a wide range of sectors: Carrefour, But, L'Oréal, Rexel...
We accompany some of our customers internationally, particularly across Europe.
What are your short-term plans and ambitions?
We are currently strengthening our presence on the national market. In particular, we are expanding in the north of France with a local team in Lille, while continuing to consolidate our employer brand.
In the medium term, our ambition is to expand into Europe, and in the longer term into Asia.
Focus on OmniSupply
" OmniSupply is a retailer's ability to rethink its supply chain End-to-End in an omnichannel approach, in order to optimize product availability whatever the purchasing channel used by the consumer, and thus guarantee the customer promise. OmniSupply is an integral part of our expertise .