“International sales currently account for about 10% of the Allview business,” Lucian Peticila, general manager and majority shareholder of Visual Fan told ZF. “The share of the international business will increase this year, we hope it doubles because we opened Allview Electronics Poland.”
The Brasov-based company last September opened a subsidiary in Poland, Allview Electronics, which is currently employing ten people.
“We chose Poland because it is a hub of Eastern Europe. There are two hubs in Eastern Europe – Romania and the lower countries and Poland and the upper countries. These are two hubs that complement each other under our plan to cover the entire Central and Eastern Europe.”
The Poland office handles a number of things such as getting Allview products certified for sale in the countries in the region, Peticila said.
“In Poland we work on product development for the countries in the region, in Central and Eastern Europe, we have tech, sales, marketing, back office and administrative people there, the systems are integrated, implemented, the same as we do back home.”
Three months after the opening of the Polish subsidiary, Allview’s products were available in all the online stores in that country and the company is now in talks with the mobile phone operators there. Sales are on the rise, but they started from scratch, the Allview representative added.
International expansion will help Allview, which grew to second leading smartphone vendor in Romania after Samsung in a few years, reach a record number of devices sold, 1.5 million, in 2015, an increase of 50% on 2014, Lucian Peticila said. Back in 2013, it sold only 250,000.
The company attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week and extended the partnerships enabling it consolidate its presence on other markets.
Visual Fan went from EUR2.1 million revenue in 2011 to EUR29 million in 2013. Peticila did not reveal the 2014 revenue but it may have stood at more than EUR60 million.
The market is “very difficult” as Lucian Peticila puts it, despite demand for smartphones and tablets and one of the problems is the rise of the dollar, the currency used when buying electronics from China.
“The exchange rate upset our plans, as it did with every other company. The market is unable to absorb the impact. We need to look at the long-term prospects of the business and try to get where we set out to step by step. One part of the system cannot swallow this exchange rate difference alone, each part will absorb some of it.”
The Allview boss had told ZF in January, when the US currency was already up 16% on the previous year that if the dollar got past 4 lei, the price of phones, tablets and other electronics would go up by 10%.
The market is also difficult because the number of competitors is on the rise. A visible trend is the international expansion or at least attempt thereof of the companies in China.
Besides exchange rate and increased competition pressure, the market is also going through structural changes, which are happening fast, Lucian Peticila added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)