25-03-2019
French postal and parcel company Hopps Group, which has been growing through acquisitions over the last few years, is trying to challenge La Poste’s dominant position on the French market with the launch of a parcel shop network under the name HoppStore.
After buying the mail delivery business Adrexo a few years ago, Hopps Group then purchased the French B2C delivery firm Colis Privé and ADS, a logistics company owned by Japan’s leading e-retailer Rakuten.
From July this year, Hopps Group plans to open around 5,000 parcel shops in press stores across France in cooperation with Culture Presse, a professional organisation representing press retailers in France. This will be the first private local postal network offering mail, parcel and registered mail distribution services for professionals and individuals and thus an alternative to La Poste.
The vast majority (90%) of these parcel shops (‘points relais’ in French) will be open seven days a week while all the shops will operate at least six days a week, from 7am to 8pm. The HoppStore locations will enable business and private customers to receive and send parcels. In a second step, individuals will be able to send small parcels to each other.
Residents in the metropolitan area of Paris (Ile-de-France) will be able to access a HoppStore shop in a “less than five minutes” walk while 95% of French households across the country will have a shop within a walking distance of ten minutes. The aim is to extend the network to 8,000 locations by 2021.