BİM Birleşik Mağazalar A.Ş. (BİM for short) is a Turkish retail company, known for offering a limited range of basic food items and consumer goods at competitive prices. Bim were the pioneers of this

discount store A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down cost ...

model in Turkey. Bim's main competitors are Şok and A101.

Business and activities

Bim A.Ş. was founded in 1995 by a group of investors around

Cuneyd Zapsu Hasan Cuneyd Zapsu (born 19 November 1956 in İstanbul) is a Turkish businessman of Kurdish and Balkan origins. He was a co-founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey as well as the founder of Balsu, one of the world's leading ...

. Zapsu sold his shares to the investment bank

Merrill Lynch Merrill (officially Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated), previously branded Merrill Lynch, is an American investment management and wealth management division of Bank of America. Along with BofA Securities, the investment bank ...

in 2000. Today the main shareholder is Mustafa Latif Topbaş. At the beginning BİM had only 21 stores, but it expanded thoroughly and by the end of 2015 it counted 4972BİM Records Growth Of 21% For 2015
'European Supermarket Magazine'' Retrieved 2016-03-13 and 2019, 7438 stores by the third quarter of 2021, the company operated 10.330 stores. BİM does not offer franchises, all stores are owned and operated by the company itself,and they are viewed as a competition to the many independent neighborhood stores. The business model is inspired by the German discounter

ALDI Aldi (stylised as ALDI) is the common company brand name of two German multinational family-owned discount supermarket chains operating over 10,000 stores in 20 countries. The chain was founded by brothers Karl and Theo Albrecht in 1946, when t ...

. It also operates 626 stores in

Morocco Morocco (),, ) officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is the westernmost country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to ...

and 320 in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

. In 2005 44.12% of its shares were offered to the public.

References

{{Istanbul Stock Exchange companies Companies listed on the Istanbul Stock Exchange Retail companies established in 1995 Retail companies of Turkey Discount stores