Lyons. When we were shopping at Continent, the sign that disappeared in one day
By Anthony Sudani
Published on
Today, many inhabitants of Vaulx-en-Velin and the metropolis of Lyon will do their shopping at the Carrefour located at Sept Chemins. If the youngest think that the supermarket has always been called Carrefour, the oldest consumers certainly remember that their hypermarket bore the name of Continent, not so long ago…
Continent: the ancestor of Carrefour in Vaulx-en-Velin
Continent arrived in November 1988 at 236 Franklin-Roosevelt Avenue. It will experience great development in Vaulx-en-Velin despite competition from the immense Auchan Saint-Priest and Carrefour Vénissieux.
“We made very good progress up to 1994”, testified a speaker from Continent to LSA-Conso. Then the hypermarket entered the mold and became part of “the trend of national hypermarkets”.
Continent was 8,200 m². The shopping mall had 37 shops: 2.5 million francs had been invested in 1994 to bring it up to date. In 1998, the level of frequentation of Continent and its commercial space showed 4 million passages per year.
Plans to expand
At that time, the goal was to show residents that the Sept Chemins area, out of the way of Vaulx-en-Velin, had real utility and great potential.
Continent, owned by the Promodès group, had big plans in 1998. He said to himself that the brand saw itself growing, going from 8,200 m² to 11,000 m² and that it could add shops in its gallery , in order to accommodate around fifty…
The sign repeated in one day in all the Continents of France
But finally, Promodès, which owns Continent, merged with Carrefour in 1999. In May 2000, Carrefour tested the first transitions from the Continent brand to the Carrefour brand in eight hypermarkets: Amiens, Cherbourg, L’Isle-Adam, Lorient, Quimper, Saint-Malo, Vannes and Saint-Pierre-des-Corps.
In August of the same year, faced with the first positive feedback, all of the French Continent stores switched to the Carrefour brand, including those in Vaulx-en-Velin and Francheville, in the metropolis of Lyon.
This historic brand, well known to the general public, disappeared from France for good in just one day.
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