Bucharest Mall shopping complex is building an additional floor exclusively destined to a new electronics and home appliances store of the Altex network. The store will take up 3,000 square meters, that is one third of the area of Carrefour hypermarket, for instance, which makes it the largest store of its kind in Romania.
“The store will take in investments worth 1 million euros and will be located on the third floor of Bucharest Mall, which is currently under construction,” stated Dan Ostahie, general manager of the Altex network. According to him, the store, to be dedicated in late October or early November, will include electronic products and home appliances, as well as IT and multimedia products.
“It remains to be seen whether the Romanian market is mature enough to take such large shops. We believe it is, the more so as next year we will be present with a similar store from the point of view of its size in the second mall, which Anchor Mall will build in the Militari area: Plaza Romania,” Ostahie added. Altex has previously operated two stores in the basement of Bucharest Mall, with a total area of 400 square meters. In this context, says Ostahie, Altex will see sales worth more than 100 million euros at the end of this year.
“At present, we have 94 stores countrywide, but the store we are going to open in Bucharest Mall will allow us to exceed the target of 100 million euros at the end of the year. It is clear, however, that this growth of the electronics and home appliances market, and implicitly ours, is, to some extent, an artificial one, being triggered by the instalments system that works very well. We will have to wait and see what happens toward the end of this year, whether the growth pace maintains, and especially what will happen next year,” Ostahie concludes. Altex Group also includes Italromtex, a company specialised in wholesale distribution of electronics and home appliances and 8tim, a transport company. ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro