Chillin'Competition

Back from hols with a sad story. During the summer, Theo Albrecht, one of the founders of the Aldi group  – a sort of German Wal Mart – passed away.

Wikipedia has a full entry on Aldi. In addition to espousing the low-cost business model, Aldi has built part of its success on what seems to be a blatant market partitioning strategy. The Aldi group is indeed composed of two financially independent firms, Aldi Markt and Aldi Süd, which respectively serve northern and southern territories (see map above: Aldi Markt in Blue and Aldi Sûd in red). As explained in Wikipedia, the companies describe their relationships as a “friendly relation“…

Thanks to L. de Muyter for the pointer.