The top second tier brands include, ZF has found, Kenvelo Grup, New Yorker, Takko and LcWaikiki, each of which with over RON100 million in sales. Behind them are Koton, Miniprix and Orsay, which are close to this mark.
Ziarul Financiar selected 20 local and international fashion groups developing under the shadow of the top three, whose cumulated sales stand at more than RON1 billion generated by about 450 stores.
Some of these groups, such as Kenvelo, LPP and Dolbos, operate several brands directly or by franchising. ZF calculated the cumulated revenue for them, as it did with Inditex. Spain’s Inditex has seven brands available in brick and mortar stores – Zara, Bershka, Pull & Bear, Stradivarius, Massimo Dutti, Zara Home and Oysho.
Almost all the big mass market names have a local presence, with the number of retailers comparable to the developed markets where the purchasing power is much greater.
Romanians spend about RON15 billion on apparel, footwear and sports equipment, according to market research company Euromonitor. Apparel gets most of this spending, over RON10 billion a year.
The executives running the local operations of fashion retailers have repeatedly called Romania a strategic market because consumers in this country are more willing to spend money on apparel than the Czechs or Slovaks for instance, despite earning double the average wage of Romanians. (EUR1=RON4.4592)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)