Amazon secures French deal with Casino’s Monoprix grocer

Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc. is taking aim at France, securing a delivery deal with Casino Guichard Perrachon SA that shakes up one of Europe’s most competitive grocery markets.
Groceries from Casino’s Monoprix stores will be sold via Amazon’s Prime Now service in Paris and the surrounding region, the companies said. The move comes as Amazon pushes further into food in Europe and supermarket price competition heats up among Casino, Carrefour SA and closely held Leclerc in France.
Casino rose as much as 9.7 percent early on Tuesday in Paris.
Amazon’s deal in France follows its acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc. in the US and partnerships with European grocers such as Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc in the UK as the e-commerce giant pushes beyond books and electronics into the trickier business of delivering food to homes.
Casino has been building up its online operations, striking a deal with Ocado Group Plc in November under which it’s licensing the UK online grocer’s order fulfillment technology.
In the Amazon partnership, Monoprix will provide items from its own stores and warehouses for the delivery service.
The agreement is “highly complementary” for the companies and their customers, Monoprix Chief Executive Officer Regis Schultz said on a call.
With a population of 67 million— roughly that of California and Texas combined—France is a ripe target for the e-commerce giant as it expands in Europe. But Amazon has struggled to match the breadth and speed of its services in the US, and its selection of products for same-day and next-day delivery in France remains meager by comparison.

Price Competition
Supermarket price competition has intensified in France amid a stagnant economy. While the country’s grocers have lagged behind in home delivery, their click-and-collect services— called “drives”—have thrived.
The Amazon-Monoprix partnership is “90 percent focused on food,” the US company’s country manager for France, Frederic Duval, said on a call. He declined to comment on whether the partnership would
add additional services through Monoprix, which also has a significant dry-goods business, or whether Amazon might pursue deals with other French retailers.
Casino rival Carrefour has been moving to counter Amazon by revamping its web offer, consolidating an extensive stable of niche e-commerce sites and expanding its sales of own-branded products and organic groceries under new CEO Alexandre Bompard.
Leclerc, known for steep discounts in its giant out-of-town hypermarkets, recently said it would open several Paris locations in a bid to grab a share of an urban market that offers higher margins than the rest of the country.
Casino’s deal with Amazon is a “very defensive move,” aimed at protecting Monoprix from Leclerc, Fabienne Caron, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux, said in a note to clients. The deal will enable Casino to buy time until the Ocado partnership is up and running, the analyst said.

Google wins Shopify as cloud customer amid fear of Amazon
Bloomberg

Google signed a deal with Shopify Inc. to help host the e-commerce company’s online stores on the Alphabet Inc. unit’s cloud service.
The deal brings a new, fast-growing customer into Google’s fold as cloud chief Diane Greene tries to catch Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. in the lucrative business of internet-based computing.
It’s also another case of a retail-related company choosing Google over Amazon’s cloud. Companies including Home Depot Inc. and Williams-Sonoma Inc. have shunned Amazon Web Services in favor of Microsoft and Google because the e-commerce giant is a rival. In this case, Shopify will still use Amazon for some cloud infrastructure, but the majority will be run by Google.
Ottawa-based Shopify provides websites and tools to help smaller merchants sell online and compete with retailers like Amazon. The company has grown rapidly since its initial public offering in 2015, with its stock gaining more than 700 percent.