Consumers will be able to buy products from Quebec businesses directly on the Le Panier Bleu Web platform next fall, in time for Christmas shopping, announced Monday the Minister of Economy and Innovation Pierre Fitzgibbon.
The latter also specified that the tool launched in April 2020 by the government in the form of a non-profit organization was now the property of a private company, Agora Platform inc. This company is made up of minority shareholders, including the Government of Quebec, the Mouvement Desjardins, the Fonds de solidarité FTQ and the e-commerce company Lightspeed. Quebec is investing $12 million out of the $22 million needed to create it and make it work.
The general manager of Panier Bleu, Alain Dumas, says he wants to offer a Quebec alternative to Web giants like Amazon and encourage Quebec companies in the face of competition from major banners like Walmart.
Quebec merchants are encouraged to register now, free of charge, to benefit from the visibility of this online platform. Le Panier Bleu intends to take a share of the profits made on each sale made through its site.
More than 50% of Quebecers would be aware of the existence of the Blue Basket, which has remained until now a simple catalog referring to merchants’ websites, according to the NETendances survey published last March by the Académie de la transformation digital. However, only 14% of Quebecers say they have used it. Just under half of respondents, 46%, said they would use the tool once it has a transactional component.
Products from Quebec and elsewhere
Consumers will not only find products made in Quebec, since merchants will be able to sell imported products. Mr. Dumas explained that a “decision tree” was in place to qualify a trader as being “Quebec”.
The company must first have an address in Quebec. Then, it must be owned at least 50% by Quebecers. “For foreign brands, if 75% of stores in Quebec are independently owned by Quebec, we will recognize the banner as being a Quebec merchant on the platform,” explained Mr. Dumas. He gave the example of the American giant IGA, “95% of whose stores are owned by affiliates who really own the store”.
Finally, the products must be in inventory in Quebec at the time of the transaction. Mr. Dumas added that he wants to promote local products, especially those that will be recognized by the recently launched Les Produits du Québec certification.
Le Panier Bleu also wishes to develop a logistics, transport and delivery ecosystem for merchants. To this end, a collaboration has been developed with the Sherbrooke logistics company WIPTEC. However, there is no question of having Le Panier Bleu warehouses and delivery trucks.
“Our interest is to succeed in pooling the existing logistical forces in Quebec to be able to send orders to these people and that they manage the logistics”, specified Mr. Dumas, specifying that it was about the work of several months or even several years.
The platform is currently being tested in beta version with around a hundred businesses.
Before Monday’s announcement, the government had injected $4.1 million into the adventure since its launch in April 2020 at the start of the pandemic. Desjardins Group and National Bank have already invested $600,000 in the first phase of this project.
With The Canadian Press