Wednesday, April 05, 2000
The new WorldWide Retail Exchange, of which Ahold, the prominent international food provider, is a founding member, today announced that Walgreens has joined the exchange. Walgreens is the leading US pharmacy chain with sales of approximately USD 18 billion and close to 3,000 stores. WorldWide Retail Exchange is the new, web-based, business-to-business marketplace founded by 12 international retail companies.
The 12 founding members in the WorldWide Retail Exchange are Ahold (The Netherlands), Albertson's (USA), Auchan (France), Casino (France), CVS (USA), Kingfisher (UK), K-Mart (USA), Marks & Spencer (UK), Safeway, Inc. (USA), Target (USA, Tesco (UK) and Walgreens (USA). Together, the group operates over 33,000 stores with 1999 combined sales of over Euro 320 billion. 'We are pleased to welcome Walgreens as a founding member to the WorldWide Retail Exchange,' said an Ahold spokesman. 'We believe this exchange serves the interests of all its members and that it will soon become the standard for buying and selling. The costs for participating retailers and suppliers will decrease substantially.'
Through WorldWide Retail Exchange, the 12 member companies, and others to be announced in the future, will conduct the full range of e-commerce transactions, independently of each other, with individual vendors. The supplier and vendor community has expressed considerable enthusiasm for negotiating transactions with individual retailers through the exchange. Each retail company will use the exchange to buy merchandise, equipment, supplies, infrastructure and other business-related goods and services. Exchange transactions are highly efficient, lower costs for all parties concerned and generate supply chain economies. Business-to-business internet exchanges generated USD 145 billion in transactions last year and are expected to rise to over USD 7 trillion by 2004.
Ahold background
Royal Ahold, the prominent international food provider, operates over 4,000 supermarkets, superstores, hypermarkets and other retail formats in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia. Worldwide 1999 sales amounted to Euro 33.6 billion and net earnings totaled 752.1 million. The company employs over 300,000 associates and serves more than 30 million customers a week. Ahold recently announced its intention to acquire U.S. Foodservice, a distributor of food and related items to over 140,000 institutional customers in the United States with annual sales of approximately USD 7 billion. In December 1999, Ahold announced its joint venture with the ICA Group, Scandinavia's leading food retailer with sales of approximately Euro 6.7 billion. Following completion of both transactions, Ahold will generate annualized sales approaching Euro 50 billion.