Opened on March 1st, just 4 months after the fire, the new branch in Epinay-sur-Seine has floor space totaling 1,300 square meters (nearly 14,000 square feet), which leaves ample room for efficient stock picking. A unique feature is the location of the counter in the middle of the highly visible storeroom. Great effort was put into relocating to smaller premises (the former branch was 600 square meters larger). A reduction in storage space was made possible by improvements in CGE D’s central logistics. On this special occasion, the branch hosted 35 supplier stands, and about one hundred customers were given an opportunity to look around the new premises. In the evening, 80 premium customers were invited to a dinner and show.
Epinay branch Director Didier Champenois is extremely proud to have found a new location at such short notice and gotten the branch ready for business so quickly. What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that in addition to abiding by the allotted budget and timeline, the new branch managed to retain a loyal following – with not one customer lost in the process! Customer support during the interim period between the fire and the opening of the new branch was both exemplary and unexpected. “You can’t seriously believe we’d abandon you under these circumstances,” one customer told the team.
“The events we went through helped me realize just how vital human relations are to our business. It took a lot of commitment for our customers to go on placing orders with us, because there was nothing left after the fire,” stated Didier Champenois. Those orders that customers needed filled within 24 hours admittedly got shifted to competitors. “But our customers gave us their larger orders to tide us over the income shortfall. They were really out to help us.” All other orders were placed by phone and via traveling salespeople. The CGE D branches in Nanterre and Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône also pitched in by providing space to the Villeneuve-la-Garenne staff as of the day after the fire. Today, the team has officially moved in to the new agency it helped set up.
“Our customers told us they found it hard to change suppliers, because when you have a relationship of trust as old and as firmly entrenched as the one we’ve built with them, they would have had to check up on the professional reliability of other suppliers, which is time-consuming work.
“I’d say that if there were one lesson to be learned from this experience, is that customer loyalty produces the kind of support that goes well beyond mere good business sense.”
Read the article of November 9, 2005 : What’s in the news is sometimes close to home: CGE D’s Villeneuve La Garenne branch burn to the ground
