Mexitak
 | |
| Mexitak | |
| Type | Corporation |
| Privately-held | |
| Founded | 6 April 1977 |
| Founder | Ležran Tivriš Tebendra |
| Headquarters | Ilarís, UFC |
Number of locations | 2,869, including 2,166 superstores and 703 grocery stores |
Area served | Worldwide, primarily Arcturia |
Key people | Otan Tivriš Tebendra (President) Heiner Renzetti, Jr. (Chairman and CEO) |
| Products | Hypermarket/Superstore, Grocery store |
| Revenue | $130.9 billion SHD (2021) |
| $2.69 billion SHD (2021) | |
| $2.59 billion SHD (2021) | |
| Total assets | $44.7 billion SHD (2020) |
| Total equity | $7.9 billion SHD (2020) |
Number of employees | 464,202 (2020) |
| Subsidiaries | GoMart (Asilica) MexiGas MexiTalk VasMart (Tamerlaine) |
| Website | www.mexitak.com |
Mexitak, Inc. (legally incorporated as V.K. Nemicõvoni Meσitak) is a UFC-based chain of retail stores that operates in several countries, primarily on the continent of Arcturia. Based in the city of Ilarís, the chains first stores served the Tavari-speaking regions of the UFC and then expanded to Elatana. Other places the chain operates include Tamerlaine, where it is a voting member of the International Trade Zone (under the name "VasMart"), Lokania, Quariin, Packilvania, the Oan Isles, and Asilica (under the name "GoMart"). The company's name comes from the Tavari "meσinítak," meaning "no time," which founder Ležran Tivriš Tebendra chose to refer to "the amount of time it will take you to shop here." He shortened the phrase and changed the spelling to make it "easier to read," with the belief that a hard-to-pronounce name would be less marketable. Officially, the name is pronounced /ˈmɛtʃitɑːk/ (METCH-ee-tahk), but it is commonly mispronounced by non-Tavari speakers as /ˈmɛksitɑːk/ (MEKS-ee-tahk.) The company has said that "we don't mind our customers using either pronunciation."
Despite the company's name, the company does not currently operate in Tavaris outside of Elatana. Beginning in 1987, Mexitak operated a chain of convenience stores in Tavaris called "VoiMart" that included a coffee shop portion called "KokoVoi." Mexitak spun off VoiMart in 2004, and the company has since ceased operating convenience stores and is now a chain of coffeeshops called KokoVoi, of which Mexitak owns a 10% share.
History
Early History
Ležran Tivriš Tebendra purchased a single, closed grocery store in the city of Ilarís in 1975 and initially operated it as an electronics-only store called "LazerMart" (a reference to his first name). However, feeling that selling only one kind of good limited the company's growth opportunities, he expanded the store and reformatted it into a big-box, hypermarket-format store called Mexitak in 1977. This store, which introduced the hypermarket format to the mandate of Ilarís, combined grocery and fresh food departments with general merchandise, such as clothing, hardware, electronics, home decor, and personal care. The store proved popular and Tivriš Tebendra quickly expanded the company to multiple locations.
The chain first expanded to Elatana in 1979, also the first hypermarket-format store there. The company continued to expand at a rapid pace, opening several stores a year; Mexitak became the market share leader among supermarkets in Elatana in 1982 and has continued to hold this distinction every year since. As of 2020, there are 94 Mexitak stores in Elatana—the stores are considered to be so ubiquitous that a common joke among Elatanans is "in order to be legally incorporated as a city in Elatana, you need at least one stoplight and at least one Mexitak." The company continued to expand, beginning operations in Tavaris in 1987, in Lokania and Quariin in 1988, and Asilica in 1992. The company began to expand to other jurisdictions in the UFC in 1995 and Mexitak now has locations in Ellesborg, Poberhaven, Kamport, and Khangrad. In 1997, 20 years after the formation of the company, Mexitak had expanded from just one store to more than 1,500. Later in the 90s, the company expanded even farther, reaching Tamerlaine and the Oan Isles in 1997, and Packilvania in 1999.
Founder Ležran Tivriš Tebendra, who had served as both President and CEO of the company for its entire existence to that point, died in 2000. He left the company to his son Teležran Tivriš Tebendra. Teležran's tenure as President and CEO was significantly rockier and less successful than his father's, he controversially spun off the company's Tavari operation in 2004 during a recession, believing the company had poor growth prospects and was a drain on profits—only for the independent KokoVoi to make a significant dent in the market share of competitor Royal Rodokan and become the second-largest coffeeshop chain in the country. His decision to break off relationships with several long-time suppliers in order to source cheaper goods from places like Ni-Rao led to a massive outcry from customers who noticed a clear downgrade in product quality and reliability. In 2005, Mexitak faced a serious of lawsuits for several cheaply-made furniture items that collapsed and injured several dozen customers in three countries; the chain settled for $6.5 million SHD in 2006 and the company's board removed Teležran Tivriš Tebendra as CEO that same year. By virtue of his ownership of the company, the board was unable to remove him as President, but he voluntarily agreed to remove himself from day-to-day business decisions in 2007, giving the actual reins of the company to the Chairman/CEO.
Recent History
Since the 2000s, the company has generally avoided expansions into new countries and instead focused on diversifying its operations in the markets in which it was already present. The company began to build gas stations in the UFC and Tamerlaine in 2008, under the name "VasGas" in Tamerlaine and "MexiGas" in the UFC. MexiGas now operates in all the company's Arcturian markets except Elatana, where ethanol is the primary fuel and there are stricter regulations on establishing fuel stations. In 2010, the position of President passed to Otan Tivriš Tebendra, Teležran's son. While Otan continued the arrangement of remaining out of day-to-day business affairs, he is credited with encouraging the company to expand into the field of prepaid cell phones. MexiTalk (which Otan said is partly a tongue-in-cheek joke about how some Staynish-Codexian speakers mispronounce the company's name) is a Mobile Virtual Network Operator established in 2011 that offers low cost prepaid cell phones and service that is paid for by the minute through pre-paid cards. It does not own its own cell towers, instead using networks owned by other, pre-established wireless carriers.
In 2021, the company became a member of the International Trade Zone Oversight Committee, meaning it is among the companies responsible for creating and enforcing regulations, standards, and policies for use throughout the ITZ. In the ITZ, corporations have significant independent authority to set their own regulations on their property, an arrangement that critics have likened to "corporatocracy." Representatives of Mexitak have refuted this claim, with Chairman and CEO Heiner Renzetti, Jr. saying in 2022 "We have proudly served the people of Tamerlaine as their hometown supermarket for more than thirty years. We value our customers and believe that operating fairly and ethically is mandatory in every situation." Renzetti noted that the company's wages "met or exceeded the local median wage" everywhere in the ITZ. Since 2001, the company's VasMart, VasGas, and VasBlast (arcade) divisions have regularly been the company's top performing divisions in terms of profit.