MediaMarktSaturn and Fnac Darty start European Retail Alliance

Europe’s leading consumer electronics retailers MediaMarktSaturn and Fnac Darty will join forces to set up a European retail alliance. This should help both parties with offering exclusive products and services to customers and achieving efficiency in the partnership with their suppliers. The European Retail Alliance will be open to other retailers.

The European Retail Alliance was announced by both parties this week. There’s no official alliance yet, but the two consumer electronics retailers have signed a memorandum of understanding to start exclusive discussions about this subject.

The European Retail Alliance should create value for consumers, supplies and members. For now, the alliance is a joint effort by MediaMarktSaturn and Fnac Darty, but the two companies already said other retailers are free to join.

‘Bring best omnichannel experience to customers’

“The alliance we decided to launch with MediaMarktSaturn is destined to bring innovation and Europe’s best omnichannel experience to customers”, says Enrique Martinez, CEO of Fnac Darty Group. Pieter Haas, CEO MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group, adds that the European Retail Alliance is a major step to tap into currently unrealized value creation potential. “We are convinced that the concentration of resources and bringing together the complementary skills of both companies offers benefits to customers, suppliers, and, of course, the members of the alliance.”

Areas of cooperation

In the first phase, the two major ecommerce companies will explore several areas of cooperation, such as strategic partnerships with suppliers at an international level, creating a jointly owned private label organization, making MediaMarktSaturn’s innovation approach part of the alliance and co-developing data analytics capabilities to deepen their understanding of their customers and products.

MediaMarktSaturn’s brands include MediaMarkt, Saturn, music streaming service JUKE and daily deal website iBood, while Fnac Darty Group has brands such as Fnac, Darty, Vanden Borre and Mister Good Deal.