At the end of 1991, three youngsters realised that they could no longer live on the salary paid by a state-owned institution, which couldn't possibly provide them with the future they were dreaming of.
Consequently, Adrian Dehanciuc, Dumitru Stoian and Radu Bunicelu established ADRAS in 1992, a company whose name comes from the three men's initials. One of the partners withdrew later, but Adrian Dehanciuc and Dumitru Stoian further led the company.
"We didn't start our business with cars, but with foodstuffs," Dumitru Stoian, one of the co-founders, recollects. "The business fared rather badly, as we were not quite skilled at selling foodstuffs, so we decided to do something we were good at." Subsequently, in 1993, after one year of failed "experiments" in this field, the three partners headed for a domain they knew best: cars.
"We sold spare parts for six months and then Dacia carmaker, which noticed our activity, got interested in what we were doing and accepted us among their collaborators. We became a Dacia official dealer at the end of that year."
Though the Romanian car market is a difficult one, with lots of ups and downs, ADRAS managed to keep the leading position in the top of Dacia dealers.
"It is quite true that the market is idle now, as a lot of foreign car brands have entered the Romanian market and some of them are imported from CEFTA countries, being exempt from tax payment. These are serious competitors for the brand we are trading," says Dumitru Stoian.
Even so, Dacia cars sell well. "ADRAS sells about 350 cars monthly, while the annual average reaches 3,800-4,000 cars," Stoian says.
The company operates only in Bucharest, where it has 4 distribution centres. The one located on aoseaua Oltenitei is the latest, but is still under construction.
Bucharest Mayor Traian Basescu granted to this distribution centre the fourth construction authorisation since the beginning of his mandate, a victory ADRAS owners are very proud of.
The company registers profit and has 160 employees now. "We were quite lucky," admits Dumitru Stoian. "One could start a business with only 100,000 lei in 1993. I still remember that we were three directors who had only one employee at the beginning."
ADRAS promotes its activity by many ways, from sponsoring cultural events to launching its own web site, which displays the technical features of the Dacia cars, the prices, the payment systems tailored for the income of any potential buyer.
Beside ADRAS, whose Internet address is www.adras.ro, there is another Dacia dealer, EFE Dacia, which has a web site (www.latinefedacia.ro), but nobody sells Dacia cars by Internet yet.
These sites provide updated information on Dacia cars and addresses of the distribution centres, but they also help the client to calculate the real price of a car bought in instalments or by leasing.
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