“We’ve had eight new store openings, two relocations and we’ll open three more stores in November and December,” said Dan Ostahie, owner and chairman of Altex.
The eight new stores were opened in medium-sized cities mainly, with a population of less than 200,000 inhabitants, such as Turda, Sfantu Gheorghe, Miercurea Ciuc, Sighetu Marmatiei, Baia Mare, Ramnicu Valcea, as well as Targu Mures and Bucharest. Two stores were moved to Sibiu and Tecuci.
Unlike the other electrical and IT retail, as well as food retail companies, Altex did not announce its openings through news releases.
Altex bet on store openings this year, despite the continuation of the consumer-spending decline by over 5% in 2011. The home appliances market, which was one of the most affected by the financial crisis, shrinking by about 50% in 2009 and by another 10% last year, is expected to go up slightly this year, companies in this business say.
Under the circumstances, Altex will open stores in Timisoara (W Romania), Cluj (NW Romania) and Alba-Iulia (central Romania) by yearend. Altex has 89 stores at the moment and will reach 90 by the end of the week (of October 31). The retailer is the second largest chain on the market after Domo, which has 126 stores.
“We now have 90 stores, 13 of which are Media Galaxy [branded]. We include here the store to be opened in Timisoara this week,” Ostahie said.
He added he had left the street front areas and only kept stores in shopping centers and malls, “because of the high traffic that allows for a better yield per square meter. We’ve focused on fewer stores with bigger floor areas and the full range of services.”
During the days of the economic boom, Ostahie’s network exceeded 200 stores.
With new stores opened and others relocated, Altex announced that the first nine months of the year had been better than the same time of 2010. The true test, however, will be in the last month of the year. December is the most important month for the companies in this business, because sales may double compared with a regular month.
This year should be the second year of growth for Altex during the crisis. In 2010 it posted EUR195 million sales, up 7% on 2009, and almost EUR4 million in net profit, compared with a 14 million lei (EUR3.3 million) loss in the previous year. Domo, the second leading retailer after Altex, announced EUR180 million sales compared with EUR170 million in 2009.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)