At the time there were 142 Carulla, Surtimax, and Home Mart locations.

In 2007 purchased controlling interest (77.5%) in Carulla Vivero.

In the 1990's Groupe Casino started taking interest in the company with a 25% stake.

In October of 2006 company founder Gustavo Toro sells his entire stake in the company (24%) to key competitor Cencosud for $273 million.

In 1994 becomes a publicly traded company.

Opens key locations in 1974 (El Poblado), 1980 (Bogota), 1981 (Envigado, Colombia).

Prior to the 1980's, most of its business came from one city (Medellin).

Though today the company gets three quarters of its revenue from food, it wasn't until 1972 that grocery items were added to store shelves. The chain of hypermarkets known as Almacenes was initially a textile business that opened its first store in 1949 in Medellin, Colombia. At the time, Grupo Exito had 299 locations, all in Colombia. Combined they represent 785,000 square feet of retail space (53 stores) and $770 million in annual sales (9% as much as Grupo Exito in fiscal 2011). To raise funding for this, the company asked shareholders to approve a $795 million share offering (130m shares).ġst move: In June 2011 Grupo Exito paid $746 million for controlling interest in three of Uruguay's five biggest grocery store chains Disco (62.5%), Devoto (96.5%) and Geant.

In 2011 Grupo Exito expressed a strong desire to expand operations elsewhere in Latin America. Grupo Exito and parent company Groupe Casino previously owned a majority stake in Venezuela's leading supermarket chain Cativen (67.1%) however it was forced to divest that share in 2011 (bought by Venezuela's government).

The company ranks next to Grupo Nutresa as Colombia's largest publicly traded food company. The group is 54% owned by France's Groupe Casino (down from over 70% two years ago) - 20% of shares are held by the pension fund Empresarial Antioqueño. As of March 2012 there were 418 locations in more than 60 cities in Colombia and Uruguay Almacenes Exito represents roughly half the stores with the other half branded Surtimax (clothing), Carulla, Pomona (supermarkets), Ley and Home Mart (appliances). The group which gets its name from the Spanish word for 'success', oversees a hypermarket business that gets about a quarter of its revenue from the sale of clothing, travel and financial products (real estate and insurance). Grupo Éxito is Colombia's leading grocer.

Casino stake in exito