Slower than one of his deliveries, but faster than he probably would have wanted. This has been the appearance and disappearance of the German company Gorillas, European leader in the sector of ultra-fast deliveries and dark storesafter his Spanish journey, in which he landed just a year ago.
Rival of Glovo, Dija, Getir and GoPuff, the competition in this sector of deliveries in less than ten minutes It has claimed its first great victim and it does so by taking out Gorillas, which debuted in our country in June 2011.
Interestingly, it was in 2021 when the Delivery Hero company got raise a financing round of more than 800 million euros in favor of Gorillas, with which he launched the ambitious plan to conquer the different European markets. Part of the irony is that at the beginning of 2022, Delivery Hero also took over most of the shares of Glovo, a company that today in our country would be the competition of Gorillas.
More than 300 layoffs and the exit of four European markets
More than 2,000 delivery men, presence in the main Spanish cities and a dismissal of more than half of its employees within Europe are the adjustments that this ‘unicorn’ of the start up of delivery, which in addition to leaving Spain also does the same in Italy, Denmark and Belgium.
With the new strategy, the German company will focus only on the five markets where they are currently competitive and where 90% of their revenues come from: Germany, the United States, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Under a format great discounts and with a significant initial outlay, Both Gorillas and its various competitors, especially Getir and GoPuff, have been subjected to a war of attrition in which prices were unusually low to try to capture the majority of their customers.
A costly strategy that is difficult to sustain over time in order to see which competitor threw in the towel first and stopped spending money in this first phase. So far, the first loser has been Gorillas.
Now it remains to be seen if the ultra-fast delivery model really has a foothold in our country and, as these companies intend, the shopping baskets increase their value or the number of operations is multiplied.
Pictures | Gorillas
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