The chain continues expanding at a more aggressive pace, a trend that started last year, when it opened three stores, as many as in 2007-2008, its first years on the Romanian market.
“We will open at least six stores, but there can be even more, as the final figure depends on real estate developers,” says Catalin Pozdarie, the executive who has been running Hervis’ operations in Romania for about a decade.
The company had budgeted five new stores for last year but only opened three. Pozdarie said last year that the number depended on the result of negotiations with real estate developers and their plans.
“We opened three stores in 2016, in Deva, our second store in Timisoara in the NEPI project and the store in the ParkLake mall in Bucharest.”
The three stores had been announced for last year, while negotiations were in progress for two more. The two were supposed to be inaugurated in the second half.
Hervis has 18 stores in Romania, after a decade on this market. The sporting goods retail division of Austria’s Spar group Hervis entered Romania in 2007 when it opened a store in a city other than Bucharest. It now has six stores in Bucharest and the rest in other parts of the country.
Hervis’ sales went up by more than 22% to 162 million lei (EUR36 million) including VAT in 2016, according to ZF’s calculations based on the data supplied by the company. Profit doubled to EUR2.5 million. (EUR1=RON4.4955)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)