To JYSK, 2016 was the best year in terms of sales. The furniture retailer ended the year with 40 stores, up from 28 the year before. The expansion in shopping centers and in street front locations also led to an increase in the number of employees and the profit margin rose to 14% in Romania last year. JYSK usually seeks locations that can provide 1,200 square meters of retail space, which it considers ideal. It does not build its own stores, it only rents the space. Its plans are to grow to 100 stores in Romania by 2020.
Decathlon is a brand that started the sporting goods market – tents, skis, bicycles, a brand that grew from 195 million lei (EUR42 million) sales in 2012 to more than RON600 million last year. This puts it in the lead on the sporting goods retail market, ahead of rivals Intersport and Hervis.
Expansion is also what put the Profi stores on the table of the biggest deal in grocery retail in Romania, with buy-out investor Mid Europa partners taking over the chain from Enterprise Investors in a EUR533 million deal at the end of last year.
ZF has identified ten retail chains whose sales have at least doubled in 2012-2016 The ten retailers posted RON20.5 billion sales together last year, and had almost 40,000 employees, after having created 20,000 jobs in the past five years. Eight of them were in the black.
The data took into account only those companies with publicly available 2016 results at the beginning of July and only those companies, which operate stores.
The ten brands to have doubled sales in the past five years are those that best illustrate how the market developed, how much the power of the brand means for the purchasing decision (H&M, C&A), what business volume expansion can bring (Profi, Mega Image, Dedeman), and what it means to open new segments (Decathlon).
The data show grocery retail was not the only winner during the crisis, and expansion eventually paid off in most cases.
DIY retailer Dedeman, the largest Romanian entrepreneurial business, has left foreign rivals far behind on a market, which saw insolvencies (Ambient Sibiu), exits (OBI), and deals (Kingfisher with Bricostore and now Praktiker). Dedeman had RON2.4 billion revenue and 5,700 employees in 2012, and ended last year with more than RON5.2 billion and 9,000 employees. It now has 47 stores and almost 10,000 employees. (EUR1=RON4.6279)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)