Bricostore allocates more than half its investment budget for Romania

Philippe Bresson, 43, the owner of DIY stores Bricostore, with 140 million euros in turnover in Romania, knows “all the nooks and crannies of the country” because the local network is the most extensive, with the Bresson family concluding its first land transactions in 1999, a time when few would have bet on Romania.

“I know Romania very well, all the nooks and crannies of the country, and even the suburbs of the cities in the most remote corners of Romania,”

says Bresson, the owner of a business, which started in 1849, and which has remained in the family for five generations, writes BUSINESS Magazin weekly.
The network has allocated 20 million euros for investments in Central and Eastern Europe in 2011. More than half the amount is allocated for Romania, a key market for Bricostore, says the owner.
“We are a family business and we want it to stay this way,” says Bresson, who comes to Romania at least once a month. 15 of the network’s 26 stores are here – nine are in Hungary and two in Croatia. That is why Romanians’ appetite for shopping or the lack thereof is very important to the owner. The local subsidiary last year posted 17% lower sales than in 2009, to 140 million euros, says Isabelle Pleska, who has been general manager of the company since the French company’s entry onto the Romanian market in 2002. The sales decline was, however, less significant than the market decline, which amounted to around 20%, according to estimates.