BASALT: A Day fly
Denmark: Not everything Salling Group takes in turns into gold. The new concept BASALT was established extremely fast but disappeared almost as quickly.
While inflation was high and energy prices at their highest, the Danish Salling Group introduced BASALT as a new player in the Danish grocery market.
BASALT was created in six weeks and opened its first store in autumn 2022. Ten stores followed in quick succession. Less than 12 months later they did not exist any longer.
BASALT, which only offered dry goods, put prices 15-20% below going discount prices. However, it would turn out that such large discounts were not enough. Most customers were not impressed by meagre prices alone – when you could neither buy refrigerated nor frozen goods.
BASALT entered the market with a promise to be far cheaper than a discount on a narrower range of basic goods.
"It turns out that very low prices are not enough. Customers are not only looking for price, they also want offers on refrigerated and frozen goods," reasons chain manager Henrik Nielsen.
Netto returns
Salling about Salling
With chains such as Føtex, Bilka, Netto, Salling Stormagasiner and BR, we work in the Salling Group to make everyday life better through good shopping experiences, job opportunities throughout the country and an easier path to a responsible lifestyle.
Just under 60,000 resolute colleagues in Germany, Poland, and Denmark service 10 million customers every week.
Because we are 100% owned by Salling Fondene, part of our profits goes back to the community. Since 2012, Salling Fondene has donated more than DKK 1.9 billion to education, culture, sport, social work, and other good purposes.
The roll-out of BASALT took place at an enormous pace, not least because they were placed in existing Netto stores, which were either facing a conversion, relocation, or closure. Now Netto is back in Basalt's premises. All employees in BASALT stores have been offered jobs in the new or nearby Netto stores.
"I am proud of how we launched a concept in record time, offering customers a much cheaper shopping basket than anywhere else in the market. It is deeply in our DNA to have a focus on solving the customers' most important challenges with the help of new, innovative measures, and we will also in the future test new solutions, all of which will be targeted at improving the customers' everyday lives," says CEO of Salling Group, Anders Hagh, in a press release.
"Do you have any plans to reopen BASALT?”
"No, we don't," writes Salling Group's communications officer Jacob Krogsgaard-Nielsen in an email to NHH.
"How much has the attempt cost Salling?”
"We do not have any information on that," replies Krogsgaard-Nielsen.
It is still unknown how many millions the test with BASALT has cost Salling. However, since they only rebranded in their premises, there is reason to believe that the costs are relatively limited.