Born in Macedonia, the 42-year old executive has been working for Oriflame for more than fifteen years. The first position she had with the Swedish cosmetics company was managing director for Macedonia. Georgieva came in Romania with her family last August. She is now running the local operations of Oriflame from her Bucharest office, as well as those in other eight Balkan countries. Romania is the biggest market by revenue, Georgieva said.
She is rather reluctant to provide figures but says 2011 was a record year for Oriflame Romania. The best year in the over fifteen-year history of the company for which data is available had been 2008, when revenue reached 122 million (EUR28 million). Once the financial crisis set in, the consumer spending decline made an impact on Oriflame’s business, as well, driving revenue down to less than RON100 million, the lowest level since 2005.
How did the Oriflame business grow in a year when consumer spending continued to decline? This decline started in 2009 and slowed down in the meantime, reaching 3% last year. Karolina Georgieva says it is because the company was successful at gaining new representatives and new customers and at the same time boost the number of products sold and the value of the orders from each representative.
The value of orders rose as the number of products ordered increased, because people chose mainly products on sale or part of special offers.
Although most Oriflame customers look for low-priced products, the company’s boss says that the premium segment is doing well, too. Romanians with above average incomes were less affected by the financial crisis than the average and low-income people, which is true not only for the local market.
Karolina Georgieva runs Oriflame on a cosmetics market valued at more than EUR900 million. She says this market grew slightly last year, a trend she expects to continue in 2012, even though it will be about a single-digit growth.
Although optimistic about the market and the business she runs she says the growth rates of the boom years will not return any sooner than 2015. She also says the Romanians are more price sensitive and cautious because of the crisis, which means that if one raises the price even slightly more than they are prepared to pay, they will not buy.
However, Romania has the highest growth potential in the region, on medium and long term, so that it will not be hard to triple sales in this country, Georgieva says. And most of this potential comes from rural areas, where people have little choice, therefore direct sales companies like Avon, Oriflame and Amway can reach the rural areas via their representatives while other rivals cannot.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)