Besadoux says he budgeted prudent like for like growth and higher growth from expansion, considering plans are to open 27 or 28 new stores for the four brands the company manages.
“We’ll have a better year than 2012 was. A number of brands have left the market in the last few years and this makes things easier for the brands that stayed,” explains the French executive who has been running Kenvelo for the last five years.
The financial crisis and the aggressive expansion of Inditex, H&M, New Yorker and C&A made several fashion brands leave, such as Kiabi, Esprit, Etam, Ipekyol and TNT. Their exit made room for new names to arrive and already existing retailers to expand.
Philippe Besadoux says his company will open new stores for the four brands managed and add new names to its portfolio.
“We will open at least ten new Lee Cooper stores by yearend, as many TimeOuts, four Tom Tailors and 3 or 4 Kenvelos.”
Under the circumstances, the four brands should end the year with 100 stores.
The company has already signed a number of contracts and largely knows where it wants to open its new stores. Besadoux explains the strategy for each brand. Kenvelo will go where it is not already present, for instance Botosani (northern Romania), after H&M, because being next to that retailer generates traffic.
Lee Cooper will have stores opened in medium-sized cities mostly, such as Focsani, Buzau, Botosani and Sibiu (eastern, northern and central Romania) because there is not a lot of competition there, as Besadoux said.
The company is choosing such cities because it covered all the major cities by the end of 2012.
As for TimeOut plans are to go to Craiova, Cluj (Polus), Pitesti (Euromall) and Bucharest (Cora Alexandriei) in 2013. The same strategy will be used for Tom Tailor.
“We ended the year with EUR20 million revenue for the Kenvelo brand, the same as in 2011 but with much fewer stores. The difference is that now they are all profitable,” says Besadoux without providing any profit figures. He also would not say how much revenue the other three brands generated, but according to his latest estimates it may be about EUR10 million for all three combined.
Besadoux says that now that the company is managing four brands, malls come to it, which means it is easier for it to negotiate conditions and positioning. Getting into the top five malls is still difficult but those lower in the list are easier to get into.
Besadoux has been negotiating contracts for store openings for all the four brands since the end of 2011. He says a new brand may be added this year but would not say which one.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)