Stokomani is a leading French discount retailer of end-of-line and brand name clearance products.

Operating from a network of 18 large-format stores, Stokomani offers a diversified mix of some 20,000 discounted brand and own-label items across multiple product categories including men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, sportswear, homewares, beauty and healthcare.

The company enjoys a distinctive positioning with multiple indirect ‘discounter’ competition, but almost no direct competition. Its price positioning is around 20-40% below indirect competitors, and some 20-60% lower than hypermarkets.

A destination store, with a high frequency of repeat visits, Stokomani is one of the most profitable concepts of its type beating most like-for-like KPIs. The company enjoys a high turnover/earnings per store and generates above-average growth rates.

Originally established 40 years ago as a discount wholesaler, Stokomani’s key competitive advantage lies in its mastery of working with ‘job lots’ – or branded clearance products. Production-intensive, the pre-resale sorting and repackaging demanded by job lots typically creates costs which large-scale discounters find hard to resource while remaining cost competitive. Many of its brand relationships, such as L’Oreal, Mattel and Adidas, span 20-35 years. The company also generates critical competitive advantage through an efficient supply chain, with the majority of products being sourced directly.

The strategy going forward is to build on Stokomani’s steady growth to date, completing its transition from a family-owned business to a fully-fledged national chain. The target is to double the store network over the next four years, consolidating the company’s strong position in a highly fragmented but high-growth sector.