Supermarts on the Seine

Shopping the French way can be a long day's journey from the corner epicene, past sidewalk stalls to the butcher, the baker and the wine merchant. Small shopkeepers still do 85% of France's retail business, but the prudent, finicky and habitual French are rapidly succumbing to a thoroughly un-Gallic habit: one-stop shopping `a l'Americaine. The pioneer and fastest-growing example of the trend is Prisunic (One-Price), the Continent's largest retail chain and a sort of bouillabaisse of the U.S. five-and-dime store, the discount house and the supermarket. In Prisunic's 304 stores, shoppers avidly fill their carts with blue jeans and brassieres, meat and mushrooms, toys and tools--while canned music wafts across crowded aisles, pretty girls demonstrate how to cook frozen foods, and cash registers tinkle at busy check-out counters.

Withering Comment. Prisunic got started back in 1931 as a frank copy of Woolworth's, became popular with working-class families but not with chic Parisians, whose most withering comment on a shoddy garment was, "That must come from Prisunic." The chain lifted its sights after World War II and spied a better market. As the American self-service idea began to catch on in Europe, Prisunic opened its own large supermarches. Today it operates 270 stores in France and 34 in former French possessions, employs 15,000 people, and last year surged above $500 million in annual sales.

Prisunic owns no factories, but stocks its shelves with more than 20 house labels that account for 90% of all its merchandise. To get products to label as its own, Prisunic's centralized buying agency roams far and near for deals, bringing back Italian sweaters (one of the best sellers) and Red Chinese tablecloths, Yugoslav canned tuna and Cuban canned lobster. About 55% of Prisunic's sales are in clothing and housewares, the rest in food.

Whatever the source of its products, Prisunic usually sells them well below other popular brands, intends eventually to remove even the few outside brands it now permits on its shelves. The chain's own Scotch, Black Swan, sells for $4.50 a fifth v. $5.60 for Johnnie Walker Red Label. To undersell Nescafe instant coffee (43-c--46-c-), Prisunic imported a Dutch blend, slapped on its own label and a 40-c- price tag. "Our aim," says General Manager Jacques Gueden, 52, "is the same as that of American discount houses--to undersell small-store competitors."

Out of the Spigot. The success of Prisunic and similar chain-store competition has helped to force 34,000 small French businessmen out of business in the past decade, has also angered major manufacturers whose products they undersell. The French are glad of the price saving and the convenience, but they are reluctant to give up all their marketing traditions even for Prisunic. Most Prisunic shoppers still insist on scrutinizing their meat without any of that cellophane around it, having their choice from an impressive selection of France's 300 varieties of cheese, and buying their Prisunic vin rouge (usually from Algeria or the Midi) right out of the spigot (25-c- a bottle). And, efficiency or not, many Prisunic stores close down promptly at 12:15 for the usual two-hour lunch.

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