The increase is largely because of the retailers’ expansion rather than because of a rise in consumer spending, since Romanians are more and more careful about what they buy and how much they spend.
“The market growth is largely because of expansion, [if we look at] like for like sales we can see they were flat. Customers are more careful about what they spend their money on and are highly influenced by price,” says Catalin Pozdarie, general manager or Hervis, a 12-store chain with RON68 million sales.
Expansion helped the business of sporting goods retailers but the five companies ended the year with RON30 million losses together, or 5.5% of their cumulated sales. Only two were in the black last year, Hervis and Adidas.
Catalin Pozdarie has previously said that the sporting goods market was flat at EUR400 million in 2012. Therefore the five leading retailers account for one third of the market.
Hervis’ general manager believes there is still room for new stores.
“We will continue to open and have one store scheduled for Promenada Mall in Floreasca, Bucharest this year. We wish we could expand faster but that is up to the openings of shopping centers.”
Hervis will compete directly with Intersport, which will open a 900 square meter store in the same mall.
Market leader, French-held Decathlon, too, plans to expand in Bucharest. It has a local network of 11 stores, three of which in Bucharest, in Militari Shopping Center (west of the city), Berceni (Grand Arena, south of the city) and Titan (Pallady – east side). It plans to go to the north side of Bucharest and also northeast (Pantelimon).
Greek-owned Intersport opened three stores outside Bucharest in Iasi, Baia Mare and Focsani last year, after having covered the capital city with five stores. Expansion showed in its sales, which reached RON103.1 million, up 16% year-on-year. The figure was calculated by subtracting from the results of Genco Trade (the company operates both New Look fashion stores and Intersport) the sales of New Look, a brand introduced in Romania in 2011. (EUR1=RON4.425)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)