El Corte Inglés makes an incursion in Central America

Spanish chain El Corte Inglés arrives in the Central America region through Sfera. The incursion is possible thanks to an alliance with the Salvadoran Almacenes Simán. Initially, there will be stores in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

Founded in 1921, Simán has a presence in El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, Alsicorp, its parent company, also has other companies, such as Prisma Moda, and deals with the management of franchises in the area for companies such as Inditex. . In fact, it manages the 48 franchises that the world's fashion leader has in Nicaragua, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Honduras. Sfera reached 162 own stores last year distributed in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Greece, and Poland, and another 268 franchisees.

In addition to the opening of stores in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala in the hands of Simán, in April last year he inaugurated two establishments in Reunion Island, August he opened the first store in Dubai in Mirdiff City Center, one of the main centers Middle East commercials, in November it entered Martinique and in December it opened its second store in Peru, where it already has 35 corners, besides continuing to grow in other countries, such as Thailand.

Much of the development of the chain is focusing, however, on the American continent. With 46 stores already in Mexico, where it has an agreement with the Liverpool Group, El Corte Inglés has signed in recent years alliances with chains such as Ripley and Oechsle to land in Chile and Peru respectively.

The young fashion firm, which has its management board, grew 9.4% in sales in 2017 compared to the previous year, with sales of 270.96 million euros. Along the same lines, the EBITDA (gross operating result) increased by 27.2%, reaching 40.8 million.

As the company explained last year during the presentation of the accounts, these good results have been reinforced by the bet in 2017 for the design in fashion collections and the lines of basic products at "highly competitive" prices as well as the internationalization strategy.

In addition to facing the expansion of Sfera, El Corte Inglés has also signed other major international alliances. Thus, it has agreements, for example, with Palacio de Hierro, in Mexico; Femwick, in the United Kingdom; Globus in Switzerland, and Al-Osra in Bharein for the sale of Spanish food. And, in the same vein, Karstad has also joined forces with Germany to distribute its sports brands Boomerang and Mountain Pro in both its stores and its online store.