Italian sportswear maker Lotto sold more than 2.3 million euros' worth on the Romanian market in H1, up nearly 60% from the same time last year. Lotto's full-year target is 4.8 million euro turnover.
"As the purchasing power grew slightly, the clients chose to no longer buy fakes from the market, but showed more interest in brand-name products. Under the circumstances, we placed larger product orders and got better prices," said Mirela Rosca, general manager of Sport System Development (SSD), sole representative of Italian producer Lotto in Romania.
The better prices attracted, as the SSD official says, new clients who could not have afforded a Lotto product otherwise.
"Besides the loyal customer base, comprising medium and high income people, we also had occasional clients that contributed to the sales growth," the SSD official added.
However, the high-end products remain the company's best sellers, as they have a loyal consumer base.
"We would bring only high and middle-end products on the market until this year, but the improvement in the customer base by attracting other categories made us decide to bring lower priced products, as well," Rosca said.
Subsequently, whereas turnover went up nearly 60% in the first half from the same time last year, quantitative sales progressed even further.
"We succeeded in exceeding the quantitative sales by nearly 65%, considering the average price per item fell some 8% for both clothing and footwear," Rosca specified.
Under the circumstances, clothing accounted for the bulk of sales (nearly 60%) in the first half of 2003, the same as in the corresponding period of last year, while footwear accounted for 40% of the turnover.
The company has five stores at the moment, four of which located in Bucharest and one in Constanta.
"We used to have one more store in the shopping gallery of the Carrefour complex, but closed it after eight months in business because of unsatisfactory results, considering most of the clients were drawn by the discount concept promoted by the hypermarket. We now work only as suppliers for the Carrefour hypermarket and the sales we make through a mere department are comparable to those we made when we had the store in the shopping gallery," Rosca concludes.
She added the company would open three new shops in Bucharest, Ploiesti and Brasov, with the investment set to reach 100,000 euros. The three new stores should push turnover to 4.8 million euros by yearend, the company estimates, from the about 3.5 million euros logged last year.
The main competitors of the Italian group on the Romanian market are largely those it battles worldwide, i.e. the world's leader Nike, as well as Reebok, Adidas-Salomon or Puma. The most powerful of them in Romania is Nike, through its local importer Elmec, which operates through both its own stores and multi-brand units. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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