This is Coppel: more than 80 years leading Mexican retail

Mexico has a large number of successful companies in the online market with various projects that have even gone international. One of the largest e-commerce companies that exist in Mexican territory is Coppel, a retail giant with department stores that extend throughout the country and that has a notable online presence.

Coppel is a store with an omnichannel approach where you can find products from different categories such as home, electrical appliances, clothing, footwear and much more. It was born in 1941 in Culiacán and since then it has managed to have offices throughout the Mexican territory and managed to reach the south of the American continent by opening offices in Argentina.

History of Coppel Mexico: 80 years of success

As we already mentioned, the company is more than 80 years old today, after being founded by Mr. Luis Coppel Rivas together with his son Enrique Coppel Tamayo. They both decided to move from Mazatlán to Culiacán, where they opened a small store called El Regalo where they sold radios and watches.

Its popularity grew after the Coppels captured a need and provided a solution for their clients. They noticed that after World War II people had no way to pay for products in cash, so they invested all their savings to sell furniture that could be paid for on credit with weekly installments. Under this dynamic, their small store became a furniture store with a credit system and they assigned the name Coppel since that was how their customers identified them.

With the passage of time they were introducing new products, such as clothing, and they never stopped providing their payment services in weekly installments. Little by little, they opened new branches in the Mexican territory and by 1990 it already had 24 stores and a reputation as one of the main distributors of products, not only furniture and clothing, but also cell phones and televisions. And by 1999 they met their goal of having 100 stores open.

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The expansion of Coppel in Mexico

Something that was vital for its expansion in Mexico and for its growth as a company was the purchase of Zapaterías Canadá in 2002. This action allowed it to stand out as a main footwear distributor (in addition to the other products it already offered) and open more branches. In fact, in 2015 it did something similar by acquiring the 51 Viana stores that were in the country and later transforming them into Coppel branches.

Today they not only provide a product sales service with the possibility of credit payment. Their list of services has also evolved to the following:

• Coppel.com
• Afore Coppel. It manages retirement savings funds, known as Afores (Administradoras de Fondos para el Retiro), for individuals in Mexico. Afore Coppel provides service to more than 13 million workers, including stocks, bonds, and money market instruments.
• Coppel Departmental Credit, which allows customers to purchase products on credit and pay for them in weekly or bi-weekly installments
• BanCoppel. This financial institution offers savings accounts, checking accounts, loans, insurance, and credit cards to its customers. It has a network of branches and ATMs located throughout Mexico, and also offers online banking services.  BanCoppel serves 12 million customers, it has 14,682 employees and 1,228 branches, in more than 450 cities in the country.
• CoppelPay. A digital wallet and mobile payments platform that allows users to make purchases and transactions using their mobile devices. With this app users can link their credit or debit cards to the platform and make payments at Coppel stores or online merchants that accept CoppelPay. Users to earn points for every transaction they make, which can be redeemed for discounts or other rewards. Additionally, Coppel offers various promotions and discounts to incentivize the use of CoppelPay.

Coppel today

From March 2020 to March 2021, Coppel presented a 300% increase in digital sales, while in the loan area it reported an increase of 204% and 306% in payments. The foregoing translates into a total joint increase of 110% in digital customers during the first year of the pandemic. However, an increase of 78% in loans and 42% in payments was reported from March 2021 to March 2022. Today it is considered one of the main department stores in all of Mexico, coming to be considered practically an icon of Mexican day-to-day life. In addition, it has also managed to internationalize, reaching Argentina where it has also been widely accepted. It has 1,550 branches in total, of which 40 are in the South American country.

The Mexican company with 80 years of physical experience underpinned its online strategy with the launch of the Coppel app, where users can check their account statement, pay their credits, apply for loans and make purchases online.

In 2022, it was proclaimed the winner of the 2022 eCommerce MX Awards as the best company in the sector in Mexico.