“We haven’t opened any new stores yet this year, but we are now getting ready to inaugurate the largest in our network. This will be the second store in Hungary, which will be in a mall in Budapest again, in Arkad,” says Kitchen Shop founder Laurentiu Ilie.
The new store will have a floor area of 260 square meters, while none of the others are bigger than 200 square meters.
The investment in the project is EUR180,000-EUR200,000.
“We’re not opening anything in Romania in 2021 but next year we seek to open one or two new stores.”
The entrepreneur launched Kitchen Shop as an online store 12 years ago.
The decision to open a second store in Hungary was because of the good sales there, like they were in Romania, too. The pandemic made people allocate more time and money to cooking, since they were spending more time than ever indoors.
The revenue of Kitchen Shop went up 43% to more than RON70 million in 2020. Laurentiu Ilie says the spending appetite has waned somewhat, so he hopes the 2021 revenue will be flat on last year.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)