The company takes a concrete structure from the shopping centers, which it then remodels, adds finishing touches and turns over to retailers that only need to put clothes on shelves or on racks.
“You only get a concrete box from a mall and in no more than sixty days you deliver a turnkey project to the retailer,” says Meda Bertalan (39), the general manager of the company and one of its shareholders. She says a 100 to 300 square meter store takes thirty days and a 300 to 2,000 square meter store takes sixty days to complete.
“The price to implement the store concept is set either as a volume price every year or bid for each project separately, depending on the policy of each brand and the terms we negotiate,” Meda Bertalan explains.
She founded the company together with her partner in 2000. Two years from establishment the company specialized in building stores.
Duo Design has completed 480 stores for fashion retailers like H&M, Kenvelo, Mango, Motivi and Mothercare so far, as well as for Starbucks and Gloria Jean’s coffee shop chains. Duo Design’s boss says her company has focused on developing stores for fashion retailers, which have expanded at a faster pace than coffee shop chains.
After more than ten years in business, Meda Bertalan says some customers come looking for Duo Design, while Duo Design goes to certain retailers.
“When a mall opens in Romania we are there because we can work on several projects in various cities at the same time. In Baneasa Shopping City for instance we did 24 stores.”
Duo Design brought both the construction team and the project management and worked on them at the same time. It has 22 employees but also works with subcontractors when needed.
Although she would not say how much her company charges, she did say it is about several hundred euros per square meter, adding prices in Romania are lower than in Europe.
Duo Design’s general manager says that the crisis impacted her industry because the price became the key factor in negotiations and payment takes longer to get.
“We’ve never stopped working. We budgeted EUR6 million to EUR6.5 million revenue for 2013 considering the openings announced by the retail chains.”
The Kenvelo group (Kenvelo, Tom Tailor, TimeOut and Lee Cooper) alone announced 30 new stores for 2013.
The company posted EUR5.5 million revenue and its latest customer is H&M, which arrived in Romania in 2011.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)