This is the third attempt of Hugo Boss to find success in Romania, after its previous franchisees closed the stores in 2014. Each time the brand arrived in the country as a franchise.
“This is my first contact with the Hugo Boss as a business. I love fashion and I’d known the brand for a long time, so after the stores closed I missed it,” Adrian Antonio Gica says. He is the only shareholder of the franchise, and the store will open on the ground floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel on Calea Victoriei in Bucharest next week.
“The decision to go with this space with entrance from the Calea Victoriei, not from the hotel, was due to chance. I knew the former owner of the hotel (Israeli Elbit group, which sold it to private equity firm Revetas at the end of last year i.e.). We discussed when the decision was made to shrink the Café Citta restaurant, so I took the space.”
Investment in a Hugo Boss store stands at more than EUR6 million, ZF has found.
The entrepreneur says the Hugo Boss officials were open to discussion and even wanted their brand back on the Romanian market, which they think has potential. They even had a market survey done to confirm the potential. Adrian Antonio Gica would not provide any figures about the potential of the business, merely saying he wants to see the performance before providing estimates.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)