“We’ve already signed contracts for five big box stores in big and medium-sized cities of Romania. We are also considering opening eight to ten stores in either street front locations or shopping galleries in small cities,” says Dragos Sirbu, the Romanian executive who runs Flanco.
The retailer also wants to remodel two of its big box stores and close four less profitable stores, Dragos Sirbu added, without specifying which ones.
“We are now operating 122 stores throughout the country. We opened 30 stores in 2016. We wanted to enter medium-sized cities, as well big cities where we haven’t had a presence until 2016, such as Satu Mare, Zalau and Focsani. We achieved both goals.”
The fast-paced expansion, the economic growth and Romanian consumers’ appetite for buying TVs and refrigerators helped boost Flanco’s revenue by 20% to almost 1 billion lei (EUR222 million).
“We will reveal the final figures once the audit has been completed at the end of February/beginning of March. I can only say that on a market that grew at a rate of 14% to 15% in 2016, our pace was about 20%.”
Flanco ended 2015 with RON776 million revenue and 1,230 employees, according to the latest publicly available data. A 20% growth would take the company controlled by entrepreneur Iulian Stanciu, who is also a minority owner of online retailer eMag, to RON930 million revenue. This puts Flanco on the second place on the market behind Altex. The two remained the only big names on a market that lost Domo, the second leading retailer for a number of years. Domo, however, closed its brick and mortar stores and Flanco and Altex took over its best locations. (EUR1=RON4.5048)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)