“This will be our first store in Sibiu. We hope to complete all the necessary preparations by yearend and have a store in Munich, too,” says Cristina Batlan, 41, co-founder and mastermind of the business.
“We will inaugurate a flagship store in Budapest on their main shopping street in a very good location.”
Musette sells premium products, so a pair of shoes may cost more than EUR100. This particular positioning allowed it to go through the crisis unaffected and even grow year by year.
“The first half was slow for business, influenced by the arrests in Romania, the war in Ukraine and the other geopolitical developments. All of them affected us,” Cristina Batlan says.
“Business picked up after June 1 and so far we’ve offset the first half. We hope to continue to grow by the end of the year and reach the same growth rate as in the previous years.”
Musette posted growth of 16% in sales to almost 55 million lei (EUR12.4 million) in 2014.
The company sells the products it makes in Romania in its 19 existing local stores and abroad in Lebanon, Mongolia, France, Austria, Israel and Bulgaria.
Musette also had a store in the New York, in Soho, but closed it last year.
“We are still considering relocation thereof but we need to make a decision about the location first. We are thinking of going to a mall, because consumers have moved from street front stores to malls in the US, too. However, we will first launch our international online store and thus test the US market, as well.” (EUR1=RON4.4211)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)