Altex,Domo and Flanco, the three largest traditional electronics & IT retailers in Romania, with a combined turnover of over half a billion euros, boasted over 50% higher sales in the weekend of 22-24 November, for the Black Friday event, compared with last year.
According to ZF estimates, sales of the three main offline electro-IT retailers exceeded EUR50 million in three days, i.e. 10% of the companies’ turnover over the course of one year.
“Altex sales for the Black Friday weekend amount to EUR20 million, up from last year, when they stood at EUR15 million. The biggest sales, i.e. 50-60% of the total, were recorded on the first day, but people continued to buy through the weekend,” says Dan Ostahie, owner of Altex, the largest player on the Romanian electronics and IT market, with turnover of EUR234 million last year.
On the first day, Flanco, the second-largest electronics & IT retailer by last year’s turnover, boasted sales of EUR10 million, more than half the total estimated at EUR19 million.
Flanco representatives did not say by deadline how much the retailer had sold during the Black Friday weekend.
“In the first 14 hours of Black Friday, Flanco hit 80%of the sales volume recorded last year in all three days of the Black Friday event,” Violeta Luca, CEO of Flanco, said on Friday.
As for Domo, the company only announced sales recorded by noon on Friday, when they amounted to EUR4 million. In 2012 total sales were EUR5 million.
This year’s Black Friday event also generated higher sales than last year for online retailers, shows preliminary data from retailers such as eMag.ro, evomag.ro and f64.ro, which had published sales data by Sunday evening. eMag.ro ended Friday with sales of EUR23 million, almost EUR1 million of which was the value of the 60 cars- Dacia, Hyundai, Ford, Mercedes and Mitsubishi ordered. F64.ro said it had sales of EUR1 million by noon on Friday, and of EUR2 million for the entire Black Friday weekend, according to partial data, while evoMag had sold EUR1.6 million by 6 PM on Friday.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)