Orange France has shared on Twitter a marketing video on its new small-format stores, part of a pilot project that aims to strengthen the operator’s retail presence in rural areas. The video features the point of sale recently opened by Orange in La Fleche, a town of 15,000 inhabitants in the Sarthe department. Inaugurated in September, this shop is named “La Petite Boutique” (The Small Store) to signal the reduced floor space (70 square meters), compared to the standard size within the Orange retail footprint.
As reported by Ouest-France, this small format has been tested by the operators in a handful of locations nationwide, with ten stores expected to take part in the pilot. The deployment started in July with the opening of two shops in Feurs (Loire) and Thann (Haut-Rhin), two French towns with populations under 10,000.
Orange is hoping that the project will support the drive to sell faster broadband services in communities such as La Fleche, where the roll-out of FTTH connectivity had reached a third of households in the third quarter.
