A significant move was Carturesti’s, which opened a bookstore abroad, in the Republic of Moldova. Carturesti, held by Nicoleta Dumitru and Serban Radu, is the leader of the book retail market in Romania, with RON133.2 million sales in 2018 and 32 bookstores. All the bookstore owners analyzed by ZF posted growth in sales in 2018 except for one whose sales were flat.
ZF took into account mainly those companies operating in retail sale of books in specialized stores and in book publishing, according to their NACE code, such as Nemira Publishing House, which has eight bookstores and Casa Cartii de Stiinta in Cluj, which has a bookstore in Cluj-Napoca. The operators of online bookstores were not included.
“The book market saw significant growth in 2018 compared with the previous year, as a result of the rising consumption driven by the economic growth and the minimum wage hike,” says Raul Pavel, buyer and trend analyst with Carturesti.
“The book market in Romania continues to suffer from serious infrastructure problems, lack of government-backed or private programs to support and encourage reading, book production, access to books for underprivileged categories, as well as rather low workforce retention. The distrust between the main actors (publishers and distributors) is an additional hindrance for the necessary joint projects.” (EUR1=RON4.7505)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)