The company will therefore keep Kenvelo, Timeout, LeeCooper and Tom Tailor fashion brands numbering 107 stores together, whose sales are estimated at EUR42 million this year.
The plans for the future include moderate expansion by two or three stores a year of the already mature brands, Kenvelo and LeeCooper, and a more aggressive expansion of the other two.
Moreover, the group is to launch the online stores of its brands next year and in 2016-2017 introduce a multiband concept that brings Kenvelo, Timeout and LeeCooper together. Another plan is to introduce a new coffee shop concept, the LeeCooper Coffee Shop, which will operate separately from the stores of the brand.
“We want to launch a local coffee shop brand, and are now working on the concept. We will go everywhere but especially in malls because Romanians are addicted to shopping centers,” says Philippe Besadoux, the French executive in charge of the Kenvelo group in Romania since the onset of the crisis.
Moreover, it is hard to find a good spot in a central location, he added.
Besadoux came to Romania to restructure a business and stayed, and six years later is discussing the company’s future plans for Romania.
When he came, the company only had the Kenvelo brand in the country and then gradually developed.
The group will stop being a Brioche Doree shareholder as of October 1 and Besadoux will cease managing it. The sole holder of the franchise is Eiffel Participation, the partner in this business. The decision was made because of each partner had a different vision for expansion, the French executive said.
The group is getting ready to launch the LeeCooper Coffee Shops, using the awareness of the fashion brand, without developing them together, that is having coffee shops operate inside the fashion stores, Besadoux added.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)