Cristian Beznoska has been running the Elmec Romania business
for eighteen months. This is his first interview, however, and he
carefully avoids talking about figures. He uses the word
“different” when asked how sales went in 2009. He does not like
such terms as ‘crisis’ or ‘difficult’. In his opinion, one of the
most important things this year has been the capability to adjust
the business to the new economic reality: “This year has been one
when companies could either adjust to different conditions and
continue on or face greater difficulties, because it was different
from everything I have experienced in Romania until now.”
Experiments began with Elmec’s start in Romania, with the opening
of the Nike store in itself being an experiment. Beznoska remembers
that there were people standing in two lines in front of the first
Nike store on Magheru Blvd in December 1999: those who wanted to
get in and those who merely looked at the windows but did not have
the courage to enter. Looking back, Cristian Beznoska believes that
both categories went through major transformations, and both those
who entered the store in 1999 and those who were watching have
become more demanding in the meantime and turned into educated
consumers.
The consumer change was rather fast to occur, and in the first part
of the 2000’s, the group wanted to bring several brands in Romania
simultaneously and set up the Famous Brands stores, the first
multibrand concept in the country, to that end. Famous Brands was
“a natural step” Beznoska believes, who feels it enabled them to
expand the brand portfolio and anticipate a new consumer profile.
“It was a revolutionary concept for the retail market in Romania,
which was dominated by monobrand stores.
Consumers want to have as many options as possible and I don’t
think anyone should be dressed from head to toe from the same
company, as if wearing an uniform.” Famous Brands later developed
from an approximately 180 square metre store to a new level, Famous
Brands Gallery. The company currently has two such stores set to be
expanded by about 200 square metres each in the first few months of
2010.