BIM – Turkey

The Turkish company BIM is today the market leader in food retailing with more than 12,000 stores in Turkey, Morocco and Egypt and net sales of USD 9.6 billion (2023).

BIM was founded by the Turkish entrepreneur Aziz Zapsu in 1995. He engaged Dieter Brandes who acted as advisor to the company and the Supervisory Board until 2005 and played key role applying ALDI’s successful business model to an emerging market such as Turkey:

– Limited assortment with items of daily consumption (600 items)
– high quality
– Lowest sales prices
– High productivity and lowest costs
– Private Labels

Aziz Zapsu and Dieter Brandes first met in Hamburg in May 1995. The first stores were opened in September and by the end of 1995 the company was already operating 21 stores in Istanbul.

In 2005, BİM Birleşik Mağazalar A.Ş. went public on the Istanbul Stock Exchange and has since achieved consistently high profits and a stable and strongly expanding development. The company is valued at around USD 10.8 billion.

BIM was the first implementation of the ALDI business model in an emerging country and thus became a business model for our consulting firm, Institute for Simplicity. We subsequently built-up successful discount companies in Colombia and Ecuador, for example. The criteria for success have been the same for decades: maximum discipline in the implementation of the concept and the development of a unique corporate culture that follows principles such as trial and error, extreme decentralization, extensive delegation of responsibility and autonomy, accompanied by trust and control of results and working methods. Wherever management and supervisory boards are committed to our way of working and consistent adherence to our principles, successful companies such as Tiendas D1 in Colombia or Tuti in Ecuador have emerged.