Considering the average investments required by the stores already in operation under these brands, the total allocated for new openings should stand at more than EUR60 million.
In the fall of 2020, Hornbach officials said at the opening of the Oradea store that development of a store in Cluj-Napoca had started as part of a national expansion strategy. A new store should also open in Constanta. Average investment for a Hornbach store is about EUR28 million in land, construction and inventory, which is about what the retailer invested in the Oradea store. Construction of stores under this brand usually takes twelve months.
Hornbach currently has three stores in Bucharest (Berceni, Militari and Balotesti) and one in Timisoara, Sibiu, Brasov and Oradea each.
French-held Leroy Merlin, too, said it was planning to double the network in Romania, now numbering 18 stores. A Leroy Merlin store will open in Targoviste in 2021, while Brasov will get another store in 2022. The retailer would not say exactly how much it will invest.
The latest Leroy Merlin store opened on the Theodor Pallady boulevard in southern Bucharest in August 2020.
MAM Bricolaj, a Bucharest-based company held by the Gavan family, is betting on development, too. After going public on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in 2020, it plans to expand its store chain throughout the country, targeting big cities. National expansion will begin with a store in Brasov in the first half of 2021, when a new store in Bucharest, the retailer’s third in the city should open, as well, following an about EUR1.6 million investment.
In a 2020 when construction and retail of related supplies were among the few sectors that continued to work, while most of the economy was reeling from the pandemic, DIY retailers bet on expansion. Seven new such stores, one of which an outlet store, were added to the DIY retail market in Romania, ZF has found.
Most new stores, four, were Dedeman. There was also a new Hornbach, a new Leroy Merlin and a new Brico Depot opened by UK’s Kingfisher. The new Brico Depot is an outlet store, operating in Chiajna, by the Bucharest-Pitesti highway.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)