Tchibo Company Profile-Tchibo Factory Inspection Consulting

Tchibo factory inspection official website: http://www.tchibo.de/

Tchibo was founded in Germany and its sales reached 4.6 billion USD two years ago. This Hamburg company, which was originally engaged in coffee business, has rapidly risen in the German retail industry in recent years and has become the largest consignment company in Germany and the fifth largest coffee seller in the world.

Can you imagine? In addition to being the largest coffee distributor in Germany, Tchibo is also one of the top ten clothing retailers in the country. Every year, Tchibo sells 1,800 products under its own TCM brand, which can even account for 75% of sales in some stores, and the sales of each product can even reach 100,000 units. Now, Tchibo's chain stores have opened all over the world. In addition to tangible products, selling services is another highlight of Tchibo: in 2004, the company and European mobile operator O2 jointly sold mobile phones settled at a single rate, and as a result, 435,000 people signed contracts in the first year.

Tchibo is still a nightmare for many small and medium-sized enterprises. Do you know that Tchibo "fights big with small"? It relies on its scattered coffee shops to sell a wide range of daily consumer goods, from fashion to small appliances. The sales strategy is to launch a new, seasonal series every week. Each series is usually only placed on the small shelves for one or two weeks before being replaced. The characteristics of these series are that they can compete with famous low-end cheap goods stores such as Aldi and Lidl in terms of price, and are designed to match similar high-end products, creating the myth of TCM.

Tchibo's success made many struggling German businesses and manufacturers jealous. In their eyes, the secret of TCM's success was "stealing, plagiarizing and imitating" in product design. "Times" gave the following two examples:

A small German manufacturer spent a total of five designers' one-year work to design a foldable Walkman headset, but soon after their product was launched, Tchibo launched a headset that folds in the same way. The small manufacturer filed an emergency lawsuit in court to prevent Tchibo from further selling this headset.

Another manufacturer had no choice but to sigh. In 2004, the company launched a tablecloth with a pattern of a little angel holding a heart, which was sold for 40 euros; not long after, Tchibo also sold a tablecloth with almost the same pattern, which was sold for less than 10 euros. Although the manufacturer used legal channels to prevent Tchibo from selling this tablecloth, before Christmas the following year, Tchibo launched another tablecloth with a similar pattern, the only difference being that the little angel was holding little stars. Tchibo, who was sued again, argued that the little angel pattern was a common pattern that anyone could use, and it was not a patent of anyone.

In the face of numerous infringement accusations, Tchibo stated that TCM-branded products are all exclusively designed by Tchibo; Tchibo people must of course participate in various exhibitions to investigate new trends in popularity and fashion, but they have never deliberately copied or stolen designs. Many times, Tchibo designers do not know that a design has been patented by a small company; if such a similar design occurs, Tchibo will recognize the other party's intellectual property rights as long as there is a legal basis.