In 2024, Olympic, the chain of flagship supermarkets of the Char family, managed to close with profits for $ 63,000 million. He did it after facing rumors of crisis, mass layoffs, store closures and even speculation about a possible sale. The figure behind this financial rebound is José Manuel Carbonell, who assumed the presidency of the group after the surprise departure of Antonio Char, son of Fuad and brother of Alejandro and Arturo.
Antonio had been in office since 1999, that is, for 26 years
Carbonell, business administrator of the University of the North and Master of EAFIT, had more than three decades linked to the organization and until then served as financial vice president. In 2023 he was entrusted with the difficult task of straightening the course of Olympic in the midst of an adverse context, marked by the unstoppable advance of Hard discount’s stores such as D1 and Ara.
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The company, which had exceeded $ 100,000 million in profits in 2022, saw its profits fall in 2023 to about $ 56,000 million. To this were added complaints for the dismissal of up to 300 employees, the closure of supermarkets in different regions of the country and the loss of participation in key areas. Everything pointed to a decline that even led to talk about a possible sale of the group.
However, Carbonell achieved the unthinkable: stop the fall, stabilize finance and start an ambitious expansion plan. He opted for technological investments, strengthened the operation and relaunched a strategy that prioritized efficiency without sacrificing the coastal identity of the brand. The results did not wait.
One of the most complex fronts has been very, the low cost line with which Olympic tries to compete D1 and Ara in his own land. Although its initial results were not the best, the company has already drawn a new positioning plan. According to Carbonell himself Valora Analyticalthe objective now is to open 100 new stores and strengthen their own brands, hoping to capture a good part of the hard discount market.
With this turn, the Char family returns to look at Olympic as a strategic and profitable business, not only on the Caribbean coast, where historically it has been a leader, but also in other regions of the country. José Carbonell’s helm not only avoided a sale announced: he returned the brightness to one of the most traditional brands of Colombian trade.
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