The story begins in the 80s. Three young engineers returned home to Morocco, with their computer science degrees in hand and a head full of projects. However, technology sector is not very developed in the country and opportunities are rare. A year later, they decided to reorient themselves towards a completely different profession, just as unknown: mass retail. They set out with a lot of enthusiasm and ambition, but also very little knowledge of the market and its specificities, and they quickly ran into financing problems with this rather crazy project. However, through persuasion and motivated by their desire for a challenge and their ambition, they finally convinced their friends and family to follow them in this entrepreneurial adventure. It was the beginning of a beautiful story.

“On June 13, 1986, we opened the first Hyper, route des Zaërs in Rabat. It was something incredible for the time, a first,” says Mohammed Aït Chekh, an early collaborator of the group. Unfortunately, it was not easy every day. For lack of means, we all had to work hard. Even the managers were at the cash desk, in the aisles or at security on certain days”.

At the beginning of the 1990s, with three stores to their credit (two in Rabat and one in Casablanca), the company was still in difficulty and had not yet found the right model to take off. The three entrepreneurs questioned themselves. Ultimately, only two continued the adventure.

Zouhair Bennani and Rachid Hadni refused to give up, and after this first experience, they decided to question all their knowledge in order to keep going. With a better knowledge of the retail market and a more strategic thinking, the two entrepreneurs decided to refocus on their historical store of the route des Zaërs and to invest on the human side with the recruitment of more talents and skills.

Thanks to this strategy, and with the injection of new financial means, they acquired the Riad 1 store in Hay Riad in 1995 and Shems in Agdal in 1999. Everything accelerated afterwards. In 2001, their new capital model was born with the integration of all these stores under the same umbrella brand: Label’Vie. The following year, the company opened up to national and foreign investment funds. The company continues to be run by the two entrepreneurs and long-time friends, but with new ambitions and increased goals for expansion and growth.

In 2003, Label’Vie bought the SuperSol supermarkets in Morocco and the company had an annual turnover of 100 million Dirhams and 150 employees. The human element is at the heart of their strategy and despite fierce competition in the sector, Label’Vie has the reputation of a young, dynamic and attractive company. Store openings followed one another and the group began to attract investors.

To sustain this pace and finance its ambitions, the company officially went public in 2008, and successfully raised 524 million Dirhams. Always ambitious, the group tackled new distribution models in the late 2000s. In 2009, Label’Vie signed a franchise agreement with the giant Carrefour, one of the world’s leading retailers. In the wake of this agreement, two large hypermarkets were opened in the cities of Salé and Marrakech.

On the strength of this success, on November 15, 2010, Label’Vie bought 100% of the shares of the Metro Cash and Carry Morocco Group. This transaction allowed the group to acquire eight strategic points of sale in seven Moroccan cities and to welcome nearly 1,400 new employees.

Today, the company is positioned on three formats: hypercash, hypermarket and supermarket, a segment in which Label’Vie is the market leader.

Thanks to a sustained expansion policy and its mastery of the business, the Group achieved a turnover of more than 11 billion Dirhams excluding tax in 2021 and will account for more than 150 stores throughout the Kingdom by the end of 2022.

“We will continue to build on this momentum to maintain our position as a key player in the retail sector in Morocco, says Rachid Hadni, Managing Director of the Label’Vie Group. Our goal is to continue to improve the daily lives of our customers by offering them greater purchasing power and a continuous improvement in the quality of our products and services.”

To support this development and to be able to provide the best service to its customers, the group has set up training programs and partnerships with Moroccan schools and universities in order to recruit and train employees throughout the country. The company has also developed its own training school, Label’ Ecole, to enable its employees to become increasingly professional and to evolve towards new perspectives.

“The human factor has always been at the heart of our business and today thousands of people work and collaborate every day to provide the best service and expertise to our customers. We will continue to bet on our youth, states Zouhair Bennani, Chairman and CEO of the group. What was initially the dream of two young entrepreneurs, proud to return to their country, to Morocco, and to contribute to the building, has become a beautiful Moroccan success story. And without the support of our employees, without the confidence of our investors, without the loyalty of our customers, we would not be where we are today. A big thank you to all of you ».