Quebec’s Panier Bleu (Blue Basket): Trying to Support Local Businesses During a Pandemic
Québec’s official colour is blue. From the flag to official government communications, the colour is omnipresent. It represents the identity of the citizens in the common project of a distinct, francophone culture in the heart of North America.
In the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone was scrambling to purchase basic Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for front-line health workers, the Premier of Québec announced that he wanted to solidify local production chains for these essential goods. Once we got over that particular challenge, the government then turned its attention to another aspect of the local economy: how to stimulate purchases from Québec-based companies in order to keep them alive during the extended periods of mobility restrictions imposed on the population to minimize the spread of the virus. The other impulse was to try to check the impulse of citizens to purchase everything on Amazon. Their solution was the establishment of the Panier Bleu (Blue Basket).
The Panier Bleu was designed to group products produced in the Province (hence the reference to the colour and name) under one banner with the intention of improving their visibility and discoverability. This would permit online buyers to make purchasing choices that would support local, or at most, Québec-based businesses, rather than geographically anonymous merchants on Amazon. The goal was to steer customers to local companies affected by government-imposed mobility restrictions via an enhanced online platform, where they could make purchasing decisions from the comfort of their home.
At its heart, its a great idea. Who wouldn’t want to support their local industries and businesses? Once it got going, and businesses began to register on the site, legitimate questions began to be asked about the government’s strategy:
- What do you mean, I can’t purchase anything on the Panier Bleu? Yup. There was no transactional capability. The site was a glorified Yellow Pages directory (or maybe, Blue Pages directory?), identifying and grouping businesses/products within the province, but you couldn’t actually buy anything directly off the site; for that, you had to click on the merchant’s web site, and — if they had ecommerce capabilities — then you could complete an online order.
- Is this product produced in Québec? There is a difference between a retail outlet located in the Province, and the products it sells being manufactured in the Province. A cursory glance though the site (which now boasts 2.2 million products available by 23,540 businesses as of January, 2021) shows that the provenance of the product is a mixed bag: exercise balls and merino wool undergarments are not made in Québec, but the hippopotamus crayon holder and the café latté bowl are.
- Is Amazon really that bad? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Québec-based businesses using the Amazon platform to extend their online reach. While the Amazon search engine doesn’t differentiate in terms of where a product is manufactured or where the business is located, it does extend a merchant’s geographic market reach, exposing them to a broader customer base than they would have otherwise. It also lets those merchants benefit from an online, logistics and payment platform that has been honed and improved over the past two decades; it just works very well.
- What about my own move to online commerce? Many businesses have been upgrading their individual online capabilities as a result of the pandemic with the addition of their own online platforms powered by Lightspeed, Shopify and others. They’ve carved out a presence online, and are growing and cultivating their own clients. Do they need the Panier Bleu? Maybe. It might help them get a few more referrals that they might not have otherwise. But their own efforts to raise their profile through social media and other methods will most likely garner them more customers, and more repeat business.
In January, 2021, the Province announced additional investment in the Panier Bleu to make it truly transactional. This investment — from two financial institutions — will be used to convert the site to be truly transactional, where a shopper can better geo-locate businesses based on product, aggregate purchases from several merchants and choose by what means their purchases will be delivered. The plan is have this capability ready by the Fall, 2021. This investment will also put in place some kind of filtering to show just how local a product is. They’re planning to use colour for this; the deeper the blue, the more local a product is. At least, that’s the plan.
But wait. There already is a fully transactional site that highlights Quebec-based products: Ma Zone Québec. Created by two Québec entrepreneurs in the Spring of 2020, the idea from the get go was to produce a fully transactional site that highlighted Québec-based businesses and products. The difference with the Panier Bleu? It was fully transactional from the start. The basic rule for businesses who wanted to be included on the site was that they had to be registered as a business in the Province, that makes products in Québec, but whose underlying components don’t necessarily have to be made locally. And, their colour scheme is black, not the Québec blue, so time will tell whether that has any effect at all in someone’s purchasing decisions.
Time will tell how these changes will produce an online shopping experience equivalent to Amazon, or Wayfair, or Indigo. Because that is their barometer. The Panier Bleu is starting from behind, way behind, as compared to Amazon. Amazon is relentless in ploughing its profits back into its business, to tweak processes and upgrade its technology platforms to stay ahead. Since 2018, Amazon’s annual net income is a minimum US$10 billion. Compare that to the Panier Bleu’s recent investment announcement of . . . CDN$900 thousand. Plus support from the Quebec government of about CDN$3 million.
Investments made into Ma Zone Quebec are unknown, as the organization is private, but no doubt they face similar challenges. And, further, when Ma Zone Quebec was created, the idea was to differentiate themselves with Le Panier Bleu because they were transactional. Now that Panier Bleu wants to go in the same direction, they’ll be competing directly with each other, raising the question as to whether there is sufficient scale in the Quebec economy to support two online platforms with a similar mission in competition for merchants and eyeballs.
Other questions remain on such things as whether or not businesses will want to integrate their merchant operations with that of the Panier Bleu, or continue to go it alone or continue their arrangement with Ma Zone Quebec; on the definition of what a ‘local’ product really is (if the underlying pieces are manufactured in China, or Taiwan, but the finished product is assembled in Québec, is that ‘local’ enough?) and how transparent are businesses willing to be in this regard; how the filtering approach will work; how the logistics (payment and delivery) will work on the back end of this site. And the biggest question of all — what will the customer experience be like? Will consumers reprogram their brains to look at the Panier Bleu first, rather than think of it after they’ve already got what they wanted on Amazon? There is very little written about any success indicators for Ma Zone Quebec since they launched in April, 2020.
Frankly, I hope it works. I’d rather have consumers discover businesses right in their neighbourhoods, or close by, that they never knew about before. I hope it stimulates them to think about purchasing their coffee beans from Café Saint-Henri, rather than Lavazza, for example, or milk from La Pinte, rather than from Lactalis (Lactancia, Cracker Barrel, Astro).
But the Panier Bleu has a huge mountain to climb before they get there. I just hope they’re planning the ascent like professional climbers — a lot of conditioning, base camps and pacing. And maybe, the Ma Zone and Panier Bleu teams can help each other rather than duplicating effort. In a race to get to the summit, you need as many helping hands as you can get.
