Kingfisher entered Romania last spring by acquiring the 15 Bricostore units, but the British group has far brought just two stores under the name of Brico Depot used in France, where the company has over 110 stores, as well as in Spain, where the network includes 30 units.
“On October 17, we will open six Brico Depot units in a single day and we will then open the last seven units in early 2015, when we are set to rebrand in a first phase another six Bricostore units, with the last unit to be transformed to be the one of Baneasa. From that moment, we will consider opening new stores. We need to gauge the efficiency of the model, but the target of reaching 40-50 stores in Romania still stands,” Papot told ZF.
Papot is confident Romanians will have a positive reaction to the model.
In the first six months of the current financial year, the Romanian stores of the group posted sales of around EUR52 million, but Papot shows that the figures were impacted by the fact that the stores of Pantelimon and Orhideea were closed for two months and the first quarter of the year is weak for the local construction activity.
“April was twice as good as March. There are many new sites, I can feel that in many cities things are getting better, though Romania’s population is falling. The need to improve the housing space is still there,” explains Papot.
Kingfisher sent to Romania a team of ten expats to run operations, hoping to bite as much of the market as possible.
“We are particularly interested in cities with over 100,000 inhabitants where we are not present, such as Iasi, Timisoara, Cluj or Galati, but we also have a store model for smaller cities. 2014 is not a representative year for us. We plan to make stronger inroads into the market starting 2015,” concluded Papot.
In Europe, Brico Depot is about to take over Mr. Bricolage network, present in Romania as well with three stores through a partnership with Arabesque owned by businessman Cezar Rapotan. However, Papot says it is too early to speak about a possible takeover of these units in Romania. At the moment, the top priority is to complete Bricostore rebranding and observe the market to set the future strategy.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)