Wholesale ecommerce platform aims to help c-stores compete with supermarkets

The platform, which uses a wholesale subscription marketplace model, connects manufacturers directly to stores, which enables stores to buy direct from manufacturers, cutting out costly middlemen and wholesalers.

Subscribbe is being launched by retail consultant Gerard Rego, who spent 12 months investigating the convenience store sector in the UK, and found that more than 6,000 UK corner shops could close within the next five years.

He said: “We encountered cases where in order to keep going, some family members are working 12 hour days, seven days a week, and paying themselves just £4 an hour. That’s the worst case we encountered, but I think thousands of people in the sector are getting well under minimum wage. Their businesses are unsustainable with such narrow margins. The whole sector is in critical condition.”

Rego hopes that when Subscribbe is launched in the fourth quarter of 2021, he will have an initial 150 stores signed up across London, and his ultimate goal is to have 5,000 stores signed up in the UK by 2025.

Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of the British Independent Retailers’ Association, said: “It could really help to be able to compete better on price. If they can charge closer to the supermarket price for key items like milk and bread then people will be more likely to use them. And if they pop in for milk they will then buy a couple of other items too.”